direct to your inboxA pub that was once run by the ‘Middleton Hangman’ - one of the country’s last official executioners - could be converted into shops.Harry Allen was landlord at the Woodman Inn for two years during the early 1960s and jointly held the dubious honour of having carried out the last execution in the UK.His most controversial case was perhaps the hanging of the murderer James Hanratty.
He went to the gallows protesting his innocence, but DNA profiling carried out 39 years later matched him to the crime scene.The Wood Street hostelry’s macabre past led to suggestions that vodka and whisky were not the only spirits to prop up the bar - and tales abound of flying pots and other spooky goings-on.But the pub closed nearly two.
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