An appeal for information about an old pub has produced details of a lost hamlet.
Local historian Cyril Ford provided this column with a list of old pubs that had once existed in the Honley area. Among them was The Royal Oak at Wood Bottom, which was also known as The Three Shiners.
Sam Hinchliffe has provided me with a photograph of the locals at The Three Shiners plus a newspaper cutting about its history, written by former Examiner columnist John Bright many years ago.
A hundred years ago, Wood Bottom was a distinct hamlet midway between Honley and Meltham, that consisted of 13 cottages, a disused tannery and the rambling pub.
“It was a stopping off point for many a Honley, Shady Row, Crosland Bank, Healey House and Scotgate mill worker on his way to and from employment in Meltham and Meltham Mills,” wrote Bright.
In the 1920s, the pub’s all fours card school was famous, the local allotments society held their meetings in the tap room, mill football teams changed in an outbuilding, Holme Valley Fox Hunt met there twice a year and brass bands played concerts on Sunday evenings.
The hamlet had a Fur and Feather Society and two general stores, one in part of the pub and the other in the front room of a cottage occupied by the Beckett family.
Tom Warburton styled himself King of Wood Bottom and Admiral Jenkinson was porter, clerk and ticket collector at Healey House railway station.
The village sadly died and the pub closed on December 28, 1935, and was demolished in the 1960s. And how did it get its nickname? John Bright had two answers.
A legend was that a landlady used to wash out the chamber pots and put them on the window sill to dry.
“Ee, lass. Tha’s getten three right shiners there.”
But he added: “A more logical explanation is that it was the custom on dark winter nights to place three oil lamps in the window to guide weary mill workers.”
Anymore tales of lost hamlets and lost pubs?
