The Old Roebuck

The third location on the trail is the Old Roebuck Inn at 42 Victoria Street which is an eighteenth-century building with licensees being recorded from 1770 when it was a coaching inn. Victoria Street was called Well Lane before 1837 and the Great Well, referred to in the early Malt Shovels’ lease, was on the corner of Victoria Street and Springfield Road. Victoria Street was at this time the main road to Stockport from Old Market Place and until the early twentieth century it was narrow with 16th and 17th century buildings on both sides. Those on the other side from the Roebuck were demolished in 1933 to widen the road. The stream that ran through Old Market place carried on in a drain down the middle of Victoria Street. In 1980 The South Trafford Archaeology Group excavated a medieval brick lined domestic well at one of the demolished cottage sites opposite the Roebuck. The well had been in use from the 14th century until the late 19th century, and a piece of stoneware bottle found in the well carried the name of the Waggon and Horses which was a coaching inn at Old Market Place. The excavation also found nearby a medieval corn or malt drying kiln dating to the early 14th century. The steep roof of the seventeenth building adjoining the Roebuck, on the corner of Victoria Street and Old Market Place, is typical of a previously thatched cottage. On the opposite corner one of the cottages demolished when the road was widened was a thatched late medieval cruck framed building. These are far less common than box framed buildings, and in late medieval towns they are comparatively rare.