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Picture source: Hania Franek
The Cock Hotel was situated at 301 Walkden Road. This pub was demolished in 2020. In the grounds there was a memorial dated 1904 to a much admired pig.
Criminal that Cock Hotel on Walkden Road, Worsley, was demolished. It's been reputed for many decades round these parts that actor Patrick McGoohan was a regular at the Cock Hotel and last to leave, being very keen on a drink. McGoohan was also reputed to live in Millionaire's Row in Worsley, so the anecdotes fit together in proximity. However, I have been unable to verify either anecdote. Living memory is fading fast. And McGoohan's biography does not mention his stay in Worsley - - Ireland and then Sheffield being his formative homes before Danger Man. But Worsley is very feasible, and not only because of Granada Studios in Manchester. McGoohan starred in Granada's ITV play 'Serjeant Musgrave's Dance' in 1961. McGoohan did 5 other ITV lay of the Weeks in 1958-59, some of which may have also been at Granada for all I know. On the other side of Manchester, ABC TV Studios in Didsbury produced the national series 'Armchair Theatre.' McGoohan was in two episodes before 'Danger Man' - - in 1958 and 1961. I remember someone posting a memory of McGoohan in the Cock Hotel on a Manchester United Football Club website some years ago - - but the oral anecdote circulated for years before that. I guess the way to try and verify the anecdote is to put a call-out on your site to appeal to living memory - - see if someone or someone's (grand)parent has/had verifying memories.
Gary McMahon (November 2021)
Patrick McGoohan did reside in Worsley! My dad told me in the 1960's. He drove past his house which I recall was a plain detached, with a blue door and a bit of a rise up the drive to it, similar to some on Stetford Road Urmston. He had moved by then and the house was quite shabby. I felt disappointed.
Sheila Brady (May 2024)
The Cross Keys Pub was part of a group of houses, terraces and a shop in Stubshaw Cross, at the top of the hill north of Ashton-in-Makerfield. It survived two wars and the end of heavy industry in the town and the mine closing. It outlasted another pub almost diagonally opposite on the same road - which was demolished to build a Christian Church in the 1990s! However, despite a huge new estate of houses being built behind it at the end of the 1990s, the Cross Keys was rarely at all busy...and finally closed in 2012. The husband and wife team were there to the end. It was resolutely traditional in its look and feel. Note there is another Cross Keys in Ashton town centre itself, about half a mile away.
John Rowbotham (July 2025)
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Other Photos
Date of photo: 2020	Picture source: Hania Franek
Picture source: Hania Franek