Ma Egerton

[wsteve55]

There cannot be many pubs in Liverpool named in honour of their landlord/landlady. Peter Kavanagh’s on Egerton Street is one and Ma Egerton’s on Pudsey Street is another. Dublin-born Mary Egerton came to Liverpool in the 1890s and managed the American Bar in Lime Street before taking over The Eagle in Pudsey Street, behind the [...]

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Seems an odd connection that Peter Cavanagh's, is, in Egerton st?? It's a great pub,interesting company,with no dodgy ale!

[edwardo]

Colin.Thanks for all that info on Ma Egerton.Like others I had not see her Photo befor,never heard the details about her.just liked the pub.
again thank's.

[JNugent]

A very interesting thread, and one I've only just happened upon, some twenty months after the previous post in it. The photos of Mary "Ma" Egerton were the first I've ever seen of the lady whose name was the stuff of everyday family conversation when I was growing up. There are so many links...

Let me explain. "Ma Egerton's" was the name by which the Eagle (a Bass house) in Pudsey Street was always known. OK, nowadays, the old name has disappeared and like many other pubs in the city, the nickname has been made official. I see also that Ma Egerton was a past licensee of the American Bar in Lime Street. And that's where the connections start. My widowed grandmother, then known as Winnie Brown, was a licensee of the American Bar during part of WW2 and later. This must have included the latter part of the war, since during any conversation which touched upon the United States, she so often would mention American servicemen among the pub's clientele.

Winnie retired due to ill-health during the 1950s. But that was far from being the only family connection. In the fifties and early sixties, The Eagle itself was managed by her younger sister, Sadie and she and her mother, Martha (my great-grandmother), lived in the accommodation over the pub. I can still easily mentally walk through that two-storey flat over The Eagle, a place of many family get-togethers at Christmas, New Year, Easter, etc. That it was right in the city centre (sandwiched between the Odeon, the Empire and Lime Street Station, with St George's Hall almost across the street) was something I just took for granted at the time.

I wish I knew what happened to all the hundreds of signed photographs which used to adorn the walls of the “parlour” at The Eagle. There were many more similar items (some dating from the days of Victorian music-hall) in storage in a disused room on the second floor of the flat.

I never knew Ma Egerton. But I did meet her son Dick many times – he was the employer of my great-aunt and of my mother, because by the 1950s, he was the owner of the chain of Egerton pubs. Someone once told me that he had been a fighter pilot during the war. Whether he’d have been young enough for that I don’t know, but he certainly exuded that “officer class” persona. Dick’s chain of pubs included (at a minimum) The Eagle, the pub in Cases Street mentioned by another poster (half-way along the street, on the east side), the Parrot in Scotland Road (which still exists), Ye Cracke in Rice Street and the Upton Tavern on the Wirral. The Cases Street pub is still there, adjacent to the arcaded entrance towards the southern end of Cases Street. My mother and her sister both worked in the Egerton Empire at various times. I can certainly remember living over The Parrot (Scotland Road) and over Ye Cracke as well as over a few other (non-Egerton) pubs that my mother managed in the city.

This is a great forum. I must check-in again from time to time.