The Rosse and a ghost

The Rosse pub, at the junction of Moorhead Lane and Bingley Road, was at one time called 'The Countess of Rosse'. The Rosses were local landowners and the land around where the pub stands was sold by the Countess in the 1870s for housing to be built. Originally low quality agricultural land, as the need for housing grew in the 19th century the aristocratic landowners obviously came to realise its value as building plots. (Mary Rosse was, incidentally, a very accomplished  woman - astronomer, photographer, blacksmith! See HERE.)  

The corner plot was sold to Charles Edwin Rhodes in 1869 for the pub. Originally a butcher, by the late 1860s he was a beerhouse keeper at The Beehive, down Saltaire Road (later The Shipley Pride). His three brothers were builders and it was Rhodes Brothers that did much of the building in the area over the next few years. The pub would have drawn its trade from Saltaire, situated on the hillside below and famously kept 'dry' by Sir Titus Salt. Later the new housing that grew up around the pub would have provided plenty of clientele. 

On one of the houses you can see just behind the pub, you may be able to see on the end wall there is a ghost sign: an old hand-painted advertisement, now faded and unreadable. The reason many of these still survive may be that the oil paint contained lead and adheres strongly to the masonry. I can't really discern what it says apart from 'For All Glas...'. 

Up the hill beyond the houses is St Peter's Church, Shipley, consecrated in 1909, which was built as a sister church to St Paul's on Kirkgate, to cater for the growing population at this end of Shipley. 

Apart from the modern signage (Sky Sports!) you could almost believe little has changed in this corner of Shipley since Edwardian times. Of course, there was for a long time the notorious Saltaire roundabout in front of the pub, a fairly scary feature to negotiate, from whichever direction you approached, and now replaced by much safer traffic lights. 

(Some information garnered from a fascinating little booklet 'In the Shadow of the Rosse' written by local historian Ian Watson. (See HERE). I hope he will forgive me repeating it here.)