Frederick York Wolseley birthday lunches 2014 – North West and Northern England

16 Mar Frederick York Wolseley birthday lunches 2014 – North West and Northern England

45 Wolseley Owners Club members, partners and family members from the North West, Wales and Northern England enjoyed the three Frederick York Wolseley Birthday Lunches (FYW) in March.

All three lunches were excellent and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves. It was good to meet up again after the rather long wet winter! We now look forward to the shows during the year. It is to be hoped that other areas will hold FYW Lunches in March 2015.

The first lunch was held at The Jug and Bottle, a traditional country-style pub in Heswall on the stunning Wirral Peninsula. Three Wolseley 4/44s proved popular transport for the day! This was a great meet up place for members from Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales.

The Jug and Bottle was originally called Hill House and was built in the 1880s. Owned privately at first by two owners, it was owned later by the local council who sold it to a developer in 1985 who ran it as a hotel. In 1982, Bernie Inns took it over and renamed it The Jug and Bottle.

The second lunch was held at The Clog and Billycock in Pleasington, Blackburn, which has been part of area’s history for over 150 years. This was a great meet up place for members from Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Pleasington, where the Clog and Billycock is situated, is one of the most picturesque parts of a beautiful area and like every real Lancashire village, it needs a pub full of Lancashire tradition. Originally known as the Bay Horse Inn, clogs and the billycock were the favourite attire of a landlord who took over in the early 20th century… and somehow the idea stuck!

The third lunch was held at The Morritt Country House Hotel & The Garage Spa, at Greta Bridge, which offered a relaxed country-house atmosphere in the North Pennine Hills near Barnard Castle and Durham City. A great meet up place for members from Cumbria and the North East.

The Morritt dates back to the late 17th century when there was a farm on the site. In 1839, Charles Dickens visited Greta Bridge, researching Nicholas Nickleby for his book and in 1946, Jack Gilroy, a well-known portrait and landscape artist completed a picture mural in just eleven days, which is still in the Morritt. Gilroy’s Dickensian faces are said to represent local characters of the time.

With the advent of the “horse-less carriage” – the motor car, as time went on – two of the coaching inns in the area went out of business. A motor repair shop however, which also dispensed petrol, was built on to the Morritt and this ensured its survival as a travellers’ resting-place.