Photo credit: Dave Pickersgill

Photo credit: Dave Pickersgill

The New Inn was at the bottom of Nanny Hill, on the main road at Stocksbridge. It was opened as a beerhouse by Henry Liles in about 1860. It is now a private house. Receiving a delivery. Photo credit: Alan Dudley Hoyle

Blackpool Trip 1939 Photo credit: Dennis Turner

Whit Walk. The pub sign can be seen on the right, and the (now demolished) houses of Rimington Row on the left

Whitsuntide Parade, or the Whit Walk, passing the New Inn. St. Matthias church and Rimington Row (now demolished) on the left. Photo credit: Sylvia Prince

Harriet Crawshaw born 1857, married Jesse Liles in 1890. This photograph was taken after 1886 when the photographers got their Royal Warrant.

James Walter Sykes became the landlord in 1938. He was the son of Walt Sykes and Emma Charlesworth, and was known as “Walt junior.” Born in 1887, he married Elsie May Evans in 1911, my great-great grandmother Sarah Hannah Crawshaw’s cousin. Members of the Evans family had, like so many, come over from Samuel Fox’s home village of Bradwell in Derbyshire to work in Fox's.

A colourful character, Mrs. Navvy Adams was a regular in the New Inn. She always wore a man’s flat cap and smoked a pipe. She liked a glass of beer and joined in most pub games. Her real name was Thirza, and after being widowed she took in workers and navvies as lodgers to make ends meet. Note: in the earlier editions of my book I mistakenly called her Caroline.

The area circled in red is where the New Inn would be built in about 1860. Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland.

The New Inn is highlighted in yellow. Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland.

The New Inn is highlighted in yellow. A row of houses has now been added alongside the row containing the pub. Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland.