Category: Pubs, Clubs & Beer

Blackburn’s Fleece pub has stood derelict on Penny Street for years.  But with signs starting to appear that Morrisons may be on its way to moving across the road in the near future.  It could mean the Fleece being reinvigorated as a new public house for Blackburn town centre.

Morrison’s intended re-location to Thwaites’ former seven-acre brewery site is seen as a major part of a £250M Master Plan which has been seen as a way of rejuvenating this part of our town centre.  When these plans were submitted in 2021, the Fleece was mentioned and demolition was discussed.  But closer inspection of these plans showed demolition was actually meant for an old building at the left side of this pub.  Which means the Fleece is just as much a part of this master plan as all the rest of these developments.

This building which used to be at the side was once a restaurant.  It’s now long gone and, in my experience, thank goodness too.  On my one and only visit for a meal in here, back in the 1970’s, it left a lot to be desired.  Subjecting me to what must have been the toughest steak I’d ever encountered in my life.  As a teenager at the time, these were remembered as my salad days.  I just wish they had been on that particular evening.

Land including part of the old brewery site will be sold to Morrisons for them to build a brand-new replacement superstore.  It will be just over half the size of their current premises.  This master plan will also include building 500 new homes and five commercial buildings on their present site, after it has been demolished.  Building work on the old brewery site is hopefully anticipated to be underway in the summer of this year.

It would be great to see another of Blackburn’s old pubs coming back from the dead, like we’re seeing with the newly opened Ribblesdale Tap.  This would be very welcome to have a pub back in operation around the Penny Street side of our town centre, especially with this area’s pub and brewery connections.  Hopefully with these developments, including the Fleece, talking will stop and building will start.

What could be better for a superstore in the town centre than a having a new pub to serve its customers?  It would also be a handy facility for travellers at our bus station across the road and nearby railway station to be able to enjoy a pint before, after and in between their journeys.

And it came to pass that Blackburn’s Wetherspoon’s pub, The Postal Order, has opened up a brand new beer garden.

This facility is next to the pub across from where Dandy Walk meets Darwen Street.  It is situated on consecrated land, owned by the Church of England through Blackburn Cathedral.  So not only real ale but spirits are also likely to be in good measure.

For many years people have said what they were missing at the Posty was a proper beer garden.  Those existing tables and seats in front of this pub just don’t really give you a sort of ambience and relaxation in a similar way to what a beer garden can provide.  In fact sitting on these front seats can often lead to racing pulses, watching police cars, ambulances and taxis speeding down Darwen Street.

This would have been just what the doctor ordered when lockdown started coming to an end a couple of years ago.  Blackburn’s drinkers could have enjoyed a pint sitting outside then, rather than having to do without during this terrible time when the Posty wasn’t able to allow punters inside.

But better late than never and there is a now a brand new facility where you can have a sit down and be entertained by an angelic sound of bells ringing and chiming, also a heavenly kind of karaoke, with people singing to the accompaniment of an organ every Sunday.

Strangely enough, this new beer garden site may be quite near if not actually on part of the site of where Blackburn’s old County pub used to be situated.  This was a Lion house, if my fading memory serves me right.  It only ever received one visit from me during my teenage salad days.  Unlike the early Christians, I was drunk but never stoned.  In 1979 the County’s walls went the same way as those of Jericho.

When the County went from dust to dust, it was a different story across Dandy Walk.  Our Postal Order was still serving its purpose from where this pub’s name originated.  After many years as Blackburn’s main post office, it didn’t become a Wetherspoon’s hostelry until 1996.

Now we have a situation where these two buildings, Blackburn Cathedral and the Postal Order, have two different objectives.  One wishes to look after your virtues, the other your vices.  With a brand new beer garden, hopefully this marriage between the Cathedral and Posty will be one made in heaven.  Definitely a case of love thy neighbour.

Blackburn’s town centre pubs could be given a boost as one of a number of chosen places to receive a licence to collect DNA.

This followed success of the town’s Covid 19 vaccination programme, which was put down to Blackburn’s above average footfall in its town centre.  Now it is hoped to capitalise on this success by taking things a step further and collecting DNA for scientific study.

Blackburn people are no strangers to giving their data for analysis.  Rovers fans, along with home supporters, gave voluntary saliva swab samples some years ago when they were playing a match down at Chelsea.  Sample results indicated Chelsea fans were mainly descended from Normans while most Rovers fans who participated were descended from Vikings.

There was also the infamous June Anne Devaney murder case in Queens Park Hospital grounds, where the perpetrator was caught by mass fingerprinting many of Blackburn’s adult male population.  It was the first time this kind of exercise had been used to solve a murder in Great Britain.

Certain pubs in Blackburn town centre will roll out state of the art smart glass washers.  These have a dual action process of first collecting DNA from recently used glasses, then washing them in the usual way.  By the time these glass washer’s contents become clean and sparkling, their accumulated DNA fingerprints will have been biometrically recorded and sent off to their online databank through cyberspace for processing.

There have been questions raised about this form of personal information collection and its legal implications.  But it seems to have been going on for years.  We all leave traces of DNA  wherever we go and this is known as ‘Shed’ DNA.  It doesn’t come from a shed but is one of the most used terms for abandoned DNA.  Police and forensic teams collect it at crime scenes and elsewhere from discarded cigarette buts, plastic cups, cans, chocolate and sweet wrappers, the list goes on.

Therefore, it stands to reason when you go in a pub for a pint, you do so voluntarily.  You are then served a drink in a polygenic pint glass belonging to the hostelry you are in.  When you sup up, you discard your glass for collection and washing and you can’t help but leave your DNA all over the place.  This same rule can apply to near enough everywhere you go, including where you live.

There is expected to be an enormous demand for this kind of data.  Not only will law enforcement authorities be interested, but so will medical, insurance, dating and family ancestry organisations.  Mining this kind of data from public houses could be seen as appropriate due to quite a lot of the latter often being an end product of what is sold in a pub.  So it seems quite fitting for  this information to be gleaned from one of its primary sources.

An ancient order of monks is claiming ownership of Blackburn Cathedral.

Members of the Order of Samplers claim Blackburn Cathedral was promised to them as reward for saving lives of many Kings and Queens of medieval England.

This order was founded around a similar time as their more famous fellow monks, the Knights Templar.  This latter order were fighting monks who made their name during the Crusades and accumulated vast amounts of wealth.  This made them fall foul of ruling religious elites in Europe and they were eventually imprisoned, executed and had their wealth confiscated, or so history states.

Samplers on the other hand were seen as friendly beer brewing monks.  They spent their time in monasteries brewing beer for other monks and nuns and local people who inhabited areas where they were based.  Unlike Templars, Samplers were very popular with everybody, including both royal and religious elites.

What particularly ingratiated them with these ruling elites was their uncanny knack of being able to distinguish between beer and wine which was safe to drink, or whether it had been poisoned.  This was where their name came from.  It was said many Kings, Bishops and Lords of the Manor had been saved by Samplers.

During those turbulent times of King Henry VIII, it is believed his Samplers really had their work cut out tasting beer and wine served to England’s most recognisable monarch.  Henry was extremely pleased with this service they provided him, especially with them helping to keep him alive.  So when it came round to his Dissolution of the Monasteries Act, Henry promised them they would not be evicted from any of their residences.

It seems one of their residences may have been the old parish church upon what now stands present day Blackburn Cathedral.  It is possible with Samplers being an order of Black Friars, based on land next to the black burn, very handy for washing their dirty habits, this may be one of the sources from where our town’s name originates.

Now it seems this ancient monastic order has appeared from the depths of time, claiming what they say is rightfully theirs.  Unfortunately for the Samplers, all records of their order were destroyed when Blackburn’s townsfolk supported Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War.

Sadly for Blackburn’s Samplers, it was said they kept sparse records and these were very limited due to their historian enjoying produce of the grape and the grain, which they brewed, far too much.  He wasn’t very good at spelling either.  He said their address was Blackburn’s Church of the Naivety.  This made people think he lived up to his order’s name way beyond his remit.

But in these changing secular times, were religious belief and influence is diminishing, perhaps today’s Church of England may be open to accommodating their former occupants somewhere within their Blackburn site.  It would be nice to see a brewery return to our town centre and start brewing beer once more.  It could become a major tourist attraction, giving us all a chance to become samplers.

Blackburn town centre’s Rock Box, across from the old town hall on King William Street, has brought in a special discount for Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) members.  On production of a  current valid membership card, 20p will be knocked off the price of a pint of real ale.

This is part of the CAMRA Real Ale Discount Scheme (RADS).  It was set up following a request by licensees across the country as a way of promoting their real ale to card carrying CAMRA members.  It gives them a discount off the price of a pint, or half, of cask beer.  This means the price of a pint of real ale will be less than £3 in the Rock Box for CAMRA members.

Founded in 1971, the Campaign for Real Ale is one of Britain’s largest and most successful consumer groups.  It has over 150,000 members.  CAMRA not only fights for making real ale available in pubs and clubs, but for the promotion and protection of pubs and clubs themselves, along with breweries.

CAMRA members already receive £30 of beer tokens as part of their membership subscription.  This in effect means CAMRA are actually giving you £1.50 to be a member of their campaign.  But in Blackburn the only place you can redeem your vouchers off a pint of real ale is in our local Wetherspoon’s, The Postal Order.  For reasons best known to themselves, not all CAMRA members wish to frequent Wetherspoon’s pubs.  At least now they can get something back on their membership by calling for a pint in the Rock Box.

The Rock Box has been open nearly four years, since Andy and Karen Joss bought the former cocktail bar: Tiki Monkey.  In that time they have established their pub as a fixture in Blackburn town centre, especially for lovers of classic rock music.  They have also championed the cause of real ale with three hand pumps of cask beer being made available to real ale drinkers. Along with being able to watch classic rock music on the large TV monitors, there is also a dart board and pool table in the pub’s upstairs room.  So if you’re a CAMRA member, why not call in with your membership card and get 20p knocked off a pint.  In these times of austerity – every little bit helps.

One of Blackburn’s finest buildings will be given a new lease of life when it opens up as a public house, the purpose for which it was originally built.

This impressive building at the crossroads of Northgate and Blakey Moor, first opened as a pub in 1897.  It has had various names over the years.  Originally opened as the Ribblesdale Hotel, it reputedly owned Blackburn’s largest pub sign.  It was renamed Gladstone’s when Blackburn’s statue of Britain’s former Prime Minister was moved to a plinth right outside the pub.  Old William Ewart still stands there to this very day.  He has been climbed on many occasion since being unveiled, most notably when Rovers won the FA Cup in 1928.  He was bedecked in a blue and white scarf and had a beer bottle placed in his outstretched hand to celebrate.  Ironically, Gladstone’s statue isn’t listed, but an old red GPO telephone box beside the pub is.

This pub was later renamed Baroque.  It seemed to be a trend back then, where the word ‘Bar’ prefixed many pubs, including a few in Blackburn.  Various nicknames were also inappropriately used with Bar for some of these pubs, including Fly, Stool and Steward.  As Baroque this place didn’t seem to last very long.  There were lots of complaints from nearby businesses, especially toy shops, about them having strippers strutting their stuff at teatimes.  Then a man climbing onto its roof with a meat cleaver probably didn’t help matters either.  And so this pub became empty for a long time.

Now the only strippers in here are working on its inside walls.  Restoration of this pub is part of the £3.8M Blakey Moor Townscape Heritage Initiative.  A project jointly funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and our local council.  It seeks to regenerate this historic area of Blackburn town centre and entice people to visit our town’s beating heart.

This building’s new tenant will be near neighbour Shh Bar.  It will move from its premises across the road on Northgate and relocate to a newly refurbished pub premises.  It will continue to keep its present name.  Opened in 2017, Shh has brought a refreshing change to Blackburn town centre’s pub culture.  ‘Ambience’ is a word often used to describe Shh Bar’s atmosphere.  Hopefully this will be transferred across to their new building when they move in.  Much interest and anticipation has been generated already by this proposed relocation.

Some good news is Blackburn’s Brown Cow pub on Livesey Branch Road reopening.  But it seems to have caused controversy amongst locals after this pub’s parent group said their hostelry was based in Blackburn’s Feniscowles district and not the Livesey part of town.

This pub is owned by Stonegate Group, which is one of Britain’s largest pub chains.  Their head office is in Solihull, but they are registered in the Cayman Islands.  Stonegate is owned by venture capitalists TDR Capital who are based in London.  TDR also own 50% of EG Group, in partnership with Blackburn’s Issa Brothers.  They are also in the same consortium, along with the Issa’s, which recently bought control of ASDA.

As regards Blackburn’s Brown Cow, Stonegate are calling it a Craft Union pub.  This sounds like music to the ears of us die-hard trade union members.  But an image of skilled electricians, plumbers and engineers working behind the Brown Cow’s bar is a bit fanciful.  It’s debatable whether Stonegate even recognises trade unions in this industry.  They certainly didn’t have any dealings with the cartographer’s union when they decided their pub’s address was in Feniscowles.

Harking back to a previous identity problem following boundary changes in 1974.  Cherry Tree and Feniscowles, which came under the old Chorley Rural District, became part of Blackburn.  Unfortunately this resulted in Livesey Branch Road having houses along it with the same door numbers as a legacy of this road originally being in two separate boroughs.

Perhaps there could be an answer to this mystery of why the Brown Cow has been placed in Feniscowles after all.  This may be down to Feniscowles actually having a cow in its name – immediately after Fenis.  No doubt Stonegate are glad our town is Blackburn and not Scunthorpe.  This latter town gave rise to the ‘Scunthorpe Problem’ of 1996 which AOL’s profanity filter prevented residents from this Lincolnshire town creating accounts with them due to a substring containing an obscene word.  Something similar also happened to Google’s SafeSearch filter with the same town.

On the bright side, at least we can breathe a sigh of relief that we could never suffer any confusion with Blackburn’s other Feniscowles pub at the top end of Livesey Branch Road – the Feildens Arms.  This is down to it not having an apostrophe like its namesake a few miles due north in Mellor Brook.  What a handy solution!

One of Blackburn town centre’s closed pubs may be turned into a heritage project.  This scheme could regenerate its building by transforming it into a pub museum.

The Fleece on Penny Street has been closed for many years and its previous owner, Thwaites Brewery, would probably have liked to have seen it demolished.  But our local council, in partnership with Maple Grove Developments, plans to buy Thwaites’ old brewery site.  This includes the Fleece and former Waterloo/Daniel’s pub, currently being used by the Bureau of Blackburn, following the fire where they were based at St John’s church.

This pub, at one time known as the Golden Fleece, was used as a lock-up many years ago.  These were various town centre pubs with secure cellars where drunks and vagabonds could be banged up overnight and dealt with next day.  John Hall, a 19^th century landlord of this pub, charged one shilling to lock drunks up during the day.  His night time rate was 1s 6d.  But the Fleece has since hosted many a voluntary lock-in since its days as a drunkard’s prison.

Our problem in Blackburn is pubs are disappearing at an alarming rate.  This follows a similar situation with our old textile mills and factories.  Blackburn’s skyline used to be thronged with mill chimneys, but now they are noticeable by their absence and have become quite a rarity.  While not being an aesthetically pretty sight, they are still a huge part of our history and heritage as a cotton weaving town.  Now there is a movement to make sure our old mill chimneys are preserved wherever possible.

Preserving our old pubs could also be a once in a lifetime opportunity to save another aspect of Blackburn’s working class culture and heritage.  Sometimes people forget our town was known as an important brewing centre.  Many people think this seems to be the case with some brewers which used to be based here and now want to see themselves in a more gentrified and rustic way than they were known for previously.  But it should always be remembered:  You can take the brewery out of Blackburn, but you can’t take Blackburn out of the brewery.  Sadly, time has proven you can take pubs out of Blackburn, mostly never to return.

This idea of a pub museum actually originated in one of Blackburn’s pubs.  What makes it different from all those other beer-sodden hare-brained schemes, which often come up in pubs, is this one is no pipe dream and might make it to the next rung.  After all, along with the Fleece, we have plenty of premises available for such a project.