Dutton Ales in the Station Hotel Warrington Street a ghost sign

The Station Hoetl today

So here we are with more ghost signs from Ashton, and this has become one of my favourites.

It is of the Station Hotel on Warrington Street, and there hidden for far too long is the name of Dutton’s Ales.

It is there to the left of the entrance

Now Thomas Dutton and his son founded the Salford Brewery on Bow Street in Blackburn in 1799.

The firm traded as Thomas Dutton and Co until 1884  it became Dutton & Co. Dutton’s  Blackburn Brewery Ltd registered in Nov 1897 with 92 licensded houses at a purchase of £740,000.

The Station Hotel in 1986

It expanded during the rest of the 19th and 20th centuries acquiring lots of local north west breweries and then was acquired by Whitbread’s in 1964*

Looking at earlier pictures of the Station sometime in the 1980s if not earlier our sign was hidden under a board which I suppose helped preserve the sign.






Pictures, the Station today from the collection of Mike Calverley and in 1986,  Mr C. Makepeace, courtesy of Tameside Image Archive, t06607,  http://www.tameside.gov.uk/history/archive.php3

* The Brewing Industry: A Guide to Historical Records
 edited by Lesley Richmond, Alison Turton Manchester University Press 1990