The Old Mother Redcap might well be a recent addition to Bradways pub list, but the situation is slightly more involved than it might at first appear.
The arrival of scores of miners to build The Bradway Railway Tunnel led several enterprising householders to supplement their income by providing beer for the newcomers.
One such establishment was a beerhouse called Babes in the Wood. It was sited at the end of a short footpath from the tunnel mouth, and appears to have opened around 1866. It is likely that this was never more than a simple beerhouse that dissapeared when the Beerhouse Act was recinded around 1870. Certainly by the time the tunnel was complete there was no longer the qick profit to be made, and the Babes in the Wood reverted to a farmhouse.
More than 100 years later, the Old Mother Redcap was built on a site roughly corresponding to that previously occupied by the Babes in the Wood.
The new pub is a large open plan establishment serving Sam Smith's beer. It is a huge contrast to its predecessor. The name Old Mother Redcap was a title applied to "ale wives" who brewed the beer in beerhouses. Quite appropriate, I think.