THIS public house towards the bottom of Low Street, the Hare & Hounds, became a casualty of another dramatic 1960s clearance scheme, this time prior to the construction of Worth Way. It stood at the corner with Wellington Street, which also disappeared.
The Hare & Hounds had its moment in Keighley history during the anti-compulsory vaccination disturbances of 1876, when seven members of the Keighley Board of Guardians were arrested for refusing to implement the Vaccination Acts.
When the High Sheriff's officers came to escort them to prison in York, a sympathetic Keighley mob waylaid the omnibus taking them to the railway station and released the guardians, while the officers took refuge in the Hare & Hounds.
As was often the case in those rumbustious days, the episode was commemorated in doggerel verse:
At the pale little Sheriff one couldn't but smile,
As dumbfounded he sat like a mouse all the while,
Saying, I've heard tell o' Keighley, but ne'er been before,
And may I be hanged if I come any more.
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