history of the bay horse inn

extract from ‘Northward’ by Anthony Hewitson 1836 - 1912 (pen name Atticus) and first published in 1900

One-third of a mile north-east of the Preston and Lancaster main road, up the side way past the two ‘Abbey’ house in Ellel, Bay Horse railway station is situated; but, strange as it may seem, through the station is thus designated, there is no village, nor hamlet, nor locality at all which bears such name. All the buildings etc - and there are but few - in the quasi or supposed Bay Horse region are, properly speaking, in Ellel. At the time when Preston and Lancaster length of railway was made, a station was required between Scorton and galgate, for south Ellel, Forton, Cockerham, and Dolphinholme people, and as the place selected for it had no name it took that of the nearest building, which was the one originally used as the Bay Horse Inn, directly adjoining the old coach road - about 40 yards distant, and on the lower side. In a hollow at the side of the old coach road, about 200 yards north-west of the station, there used to be a public-house called the Rising Sun. It was done away with, as a licensed place, about 1815, being supplanted - so it had been conjectured - by an inn which took the name of the Bay Horse (the present @Old Bay horse’) at the corner of the road opposite the station, and which was kept open until 1825, when its license and name were transferred to a house, built in that year, a quarter of a mile south-west, and quite close to a length of the new main road going past it. Coaches were drawn up and horse changed at this ‘New Bay Horse’ from the time of its opening until the railway system put an end to their running.

After being closed as an inn, the Old Bay Horse premises were used as a dwelling-house, etc., and eventually the district post office business was done here. In 1892, after being considerably enlarged and improved, the old place was reopened as an inn - the license of the New Bay Horse going to it, whilst the postal business was transferred from the `old’ to the ‘new’ premises. and so matters remain. Up to about 1895, when he died, there lived at one of the cottages on the south east side of the station a man, named Richard Brockbank, who supped the last glass of ale supplied at the Old Bay Horse prior to its closure in 1825, and partook of the first glass sold at the place when it was reopened 67 years afterwards!

In the forties, some time after the railway had been opened, a curious mishap occurred at Bay Horse station. At the time referred to, and for many years afterwards. there was a level crossing, with the customery kind of gate on the north side of and quite near to the station. A man called Jack Smith was, in his turn, the driver of the engine which brought up the Sunday morning train from Lancaster to Preston, and having been several times obliged to stop, just before reaching Bay Horse station, in consequence of the crossing gate being closed against him, he at length vowed that he would put an end to the annoyance: so he told the stationmaster (Wadeson), that if the gate were shut in this way any more, on a Sunday morning, he would run his engine right through it. When Jack next came up with the Sunday morning train, the gate was again closed, and without any hesitation at all he dashed into it and broke it to pieces. But in those days locomotives were small and light, and some of the fragments of the crossing gate threw the engine off the rails.