Bolton Parade

This street, off Bolton Street, was originally called Cross Lane, and is shown with that name on Rocque.¹

(There was another Bolton Parade, off Dorset Street, I think.)

In 1894, some of the local ratepayers applied to the Corporation to have the name changed to “European Place’.²

According to the memorialists, the street had ‘for some time past… been inhabited by women of questionable character’, leading to ‘a very deteriorating effect on all property in the immediate vicinity’.

They went on to say that, as these women had been ‘expelled from the lane’, it was necessary to change the name.

They proposed the name ‘European Place’, as the European Hotel on Bolton Street was an ‘historical building’ and suggesting that in adopting that name the Corporation would be ‘’localising and at the same time redeeming the reputation of the surrounding property’. Among those who signed the memorial was the owner of the European Hotel, but I’m sure that had nothing to do with it.

The Paving Committee accepted the argument that the name should be changed, but decided on ‘Bolton Parade’.

The name was duly changed, although the 1897 Ordnance Survey still shows it as ‘Cross Lane’.³

Sometime after 1944, the last year it was listed in Thom’s,⁴ the street was incorporated into the College of Technology, which was built on the site of the European Hotel (1908-11).

It now forms the entrance and roadway into the college car park, and the line of the street can be clearly seen in an aerial view.

1. Rocque, 1756. ↩︎
2. Reports 1894/128. ↩︎
3. OS 1897. ↩︎
4. Thom’s, 1944. ↩︎