Next door to the Coach & Horses but seemingly much older. Recorded as the Bowling Green in 1733, but claims to be much older – possibly 16th century.
An almost deserted Oxford Street, circa 1960, shows contrasting period buildings.
It was a rendezvous for early 19th century ‘reformers’, when their original meeting place, the Anchor in Charles Street, became too ‘hot.’ The Bowling Green offered what was thought a safer haven, but in 1817 Radical Leicester informs us of a spy engaged by the Corporation hiding in a barrel covered with a sack over the top. His mission was to report back with the reformer’s plans.
Often used by staunch reformers, the Bowling Green became one of Leicester’s leading radical inns, overseen by Samuel & Sarah Stretton victuallers.
During the Stretton’s tenure in 1844, Harriet Loseby (aged twenty-five), after drinking gin in the Bowling Green, proceeded to go down the lane, fell into the dyke – which was up to two feet of water – and drowned. Although recorded as an accident, the jury with recommended that the corporation erect a fence either side of the dyke which runs along the lane.
By the 1980s it was called Ye Old Bowling Green. An intriguing aspect was a staircase that leads to nowhere – a blank wall. A complete list of licensees can be found in JR’s research.
By 1996 saw the Old Bowling Green gutted and renamed the Full Back & Firkin, one of a chain of pubs under the Firkin brand throughout the Midlands and the South.
Apart from the façade, it was total destruction for the Old Bowling Green. The fashion for the Firkin chain however grew thin – too many ‘firkins’ were opened, over cooking the novelty brand with Leicester alone having three within a few hundred yards – the Physio & Firkin and Fuzzock & Firkin, as well as the Fullback & Firkin. By 2001, it was all changed again, this time to the Polar Bear.
Why would anyone call a pub in the middle of Leicester the Polar Bear? The clue was in the adjoining building – for many years ‘Fox’s Glacier Mints’, with their Polar Bear logo seen here in the photo below.
As of writing, the pub is still very much open for business.
I worked here for a number of years. The staircase actually leads to the upper floor of the building (you can see the 1st floor windows in the exterior images) containing the landlords flat and office
Many thanks Chris, when I went up the stairs it had all been blocked off, that was in the Firkin era.