The Railway Inn began life as a cottage on Back Street, at the corner of Plant Lane.
George Hollingworth (born Sawley 1785, died 1863) was running the beer house here from the 1840s (if not earlier).
The 1861 census still has George Hollingworth (76) as a publican on Back Street, with Samuel and Mary Staples running a grocer’s shop next door. On the same census James Allen was named as the landlord of the Railway Inn, but that entry may be wrong, as it seems to relate to the New Inn, unless the pub names were changed.
George Hollingworth died in 1863 and William ‘Baker’ Hall took over and ran the Railway for the next 36 years. In 1873 he was charged with keeping an unstamped measure. In 1897, six weeks before he died, William handed over to his nephew, Herbert Hall.
In 1898 the owner, Mr Daly, decided the building was too old and unfit for purpose and had the cottage pulled down and replaced by a more modern building, which opened the following year, with Herbert Hall still in charge.
