A genteel hotel in a genteel area: the Ermine Hotel photographed around 1910, complete with potted geraniums above the door. On the opposite corner of Ermine Road, Thomas Carter's chemist shop is today the Flookersbrook Veterinary Practice.

The origins of The Ermine / Flookersbrook are doubtlessly very ancient, as it stands squarely upon the Roman Road (some say it existed long before then) that commenced just outside the Fortress of Deva, branching off from Watling Street (Foregate Street) along the line of modern Frodsham Street, Cow Lane Bridge, Brook Street, Flookersbrook, Kilmorey Park Road, The Newton Hollows (a true 'hollow way', worn down by untold centuries of feet, hooves and wheels), Hoole Bank and then onwards to Warrington, the River Mersey and beyond.
Commencing in the fourteenth century, this ancient way was superceded by a more convenient route that branched off from the old one at the Ermine's location, and that would eventually become today's busy Hoole Road. Once a turnpike road, it was for centuries a major coaching route and the Ermine would have been an important stopping place: a last chance to water the horses and for travellers to partake of a last "one for the road" before setting out upon their long and hazardous journey...

In February 2010, reader Andy Bruce wrote to tell us, "During the war my dad spent a short time at the old Ermine. He wrote a book of his reminicences and I am sending a bit that is in connection with the Ermine pub. Hope it may be of interest"...

"After two weeks it was holidays and we moved to Saltney. Before we moved, other eventfull incidents at the Ermine helped to shape my life. The Aunts had a pantry in one of the outhouses in the pub yard and old great grandma went inside to get something and left the key in the door, so I closed the door, locked it, took the key and went off and hid. It wasn't long before she was missed and me too! Poor old Grandma she was stone deaf and was banging on the inside of the door to be let out, and the Aunts were banging on the outside telling here that they were trying to find the little B. that had locked her in.

The pub yard gave me plenty of space to ride my bike. I usually had one of the barmen or firemen (?) standing on the back axle. It overbalanced one time and the person on the back ended up on his back with me and the bike on top of him.

On a Sunday afternoon after the pub closed, Auntie Nettie would do her 'cellar work'. The cellar was a little way from the living quarters. Her cellar work consisted of watering down the beer! A bucketfull out of each enormous barrel and then a bucketfull of water put back in. As the war was on the breweries didn't have the men to come around and check the spcific gravity of each barrel. Anyway, I decided to do some cellar work of my own. I waited till the pub closed and the aunts were having a doze after dinner and I set about my cellar work! I went down into the cellar. What a maze of pipes. I turned on these big taps on the barrels and then went back and told them I'd done 'my' cellar work. When they realised what I'd done they went screaming down to the cellar to turn the taps off.

They used to say that if I was cheeky or swore a big knife would come out of a crack in the ceiling above and cut out my tongue. Above this room was the Fire Service rest room so there was always creaking noices when we ate a meal and they used to say that the knife was getting ready to come to come down and they could see its glint of steel. One day I got fed up with all this and said a lot of bloodies and buggers in their prescence and the knife never came down!

Before I leave off the tales of the Ermine, I will record for posterity a final tale. I would be put to bed early. This would consist of me being paraded through the pub in my pyjamas to my bedroom above the bar. We got to my room up an enormous staircase from the bar. I couldn't sleep this night and the bar was noisy so I made a paper ball and tied it to a piece string which I gently lowered out the dark and anoy people below.
One night I got out of bed, opened a door and went down an old disused staircase, full of cobwebs and got to a sealed up door. I could hear everyone behind it drinking and having fun in the bar but couldn't get through.

Dad went back in the 1970s but the old place had gone. He said that a car showroom is where the yard and outhouses had been. The barman who served them a pint said that when they knocked the old place down they found rooms that hadn't been opened for years, some had even been blocked up.

The great great Aunts of mine who ran the pub were spinsters and their surname was Wesson. I don't know wether they held the licence or not. Nettie was married to Sid (who was away soldiering) so perhaps the licence was in his name".

In 1818-20 the Ermine's licencee was John Lightfoot (there is a Lightfoot Street just across the road from the pub today), in 1828 Isaac Spedding, in 1857 C Fern, in 1880 Alexander Kelly and from 1902 to at least 1914 Mr George Barnes.