Standing tall and narrow on Underbank, the Queen’s Head was once a much larger building, later cut back around 1866 to make room for St Petersgate Bridge and the adjoining steps. At only seventeen inches wide, it also claimed at one time to have Britain’s smallest toilet. Rumours of ghosts said to haunt the pub, including a headless pirate, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Queen Anne, can be treated with a healthy pinch of salt. Actor Bill Pilkington, however, claimed to have seen the pub’s most famous ghost, a cavalier, “for five seconds” when he spent the night there during a charity event in 1995.
In 1988 the pub was owned by Samuel Smith’s Brewery, which intended to carry out renovations after years of neglect. Builders working on the site often reported hearing footsteps when they were alone, and the foreman insisted that the building had screamed at him. As a result, the work took fourteen months to complete rather than the five originally planned.
Architect Richard Hubble later described the project as “an absolute nightmare”, citing numerous structural problems and widespread wet and dry rot. These issues, however, were at least explicable. Other difficulties were not so easily understood.
This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Ghosts of Stockport.
