Let us take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of Burnley.
In this guide we will try to give you information that will help you to enjoy a quality drink before, after
(and in cases of extreme defeat, during) Burnley FC’s home matches. These pages should point you towards the
best Burnley pubs.
In preparing this guide, there are a couple of particular groups of people we tried to keep in mind. First,
it’s clear there are quite a few people who support Burnley while having little or no connection with the town
itself. People regularly come and support Burnley from outside the club’s immediate catchment area, and they
include people who have never lived close to Turf Moor. These are our people. We hope this guide is of some use
in helping them to explore Burnley and find great places that they never knew existed for their matchday pints.
Secondly, we’ve never understood why away supporters should have a miserable time in Burnley. Some Clarets
supporters seem to want away fans to have as bad a day out as possible. Perhaps we don't feel that way because we
go to away games, and we find that in most towns you can have an enjoyable day out in welcoming pubs, if you know
where to go. We want away supporters to feel they can come to Burnley, have a decent time and not feel threatened.
That their team meekly surrenders the points is all we ask in return. And we want them to come back. Some supporters
seem to be happy for away fans to have a rotten time in Burnley – and then to complain about poor away end crowds
in the same breath. We find this attitude strange, and we hope this guide helps to redress the balance.
Given that, it's depressing that there are places within the guide where we have to counsel caution, but
unfortunately that's how it is. Visiting fans keen to visit Burnley pubs need to observe the same sensible
rules that we ourselves follow in so many places. Advice for beer-swilling away supporters everywhere is to
move around in small groups, look like you know what you're doing, don't draw attention to yourself
and don't wear colours. Some places are best avoided. We mention them in the text. Burnley can seem an
unwelcoming place to come to, but the reality is that there's good and bad there if you delve beneath the
stereotypes. Consider this our own small contribution to showcasing positive aspects of the town.
The lack of a decent internet guide on where to drink in Burnley is something that has puzzled us.
We’re not pretending that this is it, yet. We think we're getting there, but there's always room for
improvement, and your input will always be welcomed. This guide will always be something of a work in
progress. About once a month we hope to do an update. Every so often when we're feeling inspired we'll
do a major overhaul and add new sections and features. It'll be photos next. Little by little we hope to
build a comprehensive guide to the drinking delights of this footballing town.
This comments made about pubs are from a personal viewpoint, and are sometimes an amalgam of those made
by more than one person. We have tried to offer information that was accurate at the time of the last visit,
but please bear in mind that some visits have been made more recently than others and things can change quickly.
We naturally can’t be held responsible for anything that has changed since our last visit. If you find our
information is inaccurate or out of date, please let us know and we’ll amend it. Similarly, we admit to
good old fashioned bias – there are some places we like and some we don’t like – but if you feel we’ve
been unfair or praised too highly, do let us know and we’ll try to incorporate your comments.
We don’t claim to have covered every pub in Burnley, but we think we’ve got most of the decent ones.
If we’ve missed something terrific, let us know and we’ll investigate. We're also interested in hearing
from visiting supporters with their impressions of Burnley. Please tell us where we've got it wrong. All
input will be acknowledged, and who knows, you might even get a pint out of it! Mail the usual address,
londonclarets@gmail.com.
We really do make no apologies for our complete real ale bias. It’s our national drink, and it's
what we like to drink when we go to games, so it’s what we like to write about.
This guide is mostly going to be about pubs. We’re not that interested in the new bars that have
sprung up in Burnley, or, with one or two exceptions, working man’s clubs. We’re really interested in
places where the visitor to the town can walk in off the street and order a pint of beer.
We’ve divided Burnley fairly arbitrary up into a number of areas,
based around some of the town’s major streets. Think of them as crawls, if you want. Naturally, these
streets connect at various points. In the centre, Manchester Road
takes you onto St James’s Street,
which leads on to Church Street and Yorkshire Street
for Turf Moor, for example. As long as you’re aware
of how these different crawls connect up, you should be able to pick the ones you fancy and plan a route.
To help you, for each area we’ve put in a link to a map of Burnley which centres on the area described.
Look out for the arrow which points at the main street in question.
For all maps we’ve used streetmap.co.uk,
which offers free maps that seem reasonably clear and easy to
follow. It’s a free service, so you may have to put up with some advertising. The only other flaw seems to
be that Turf Moor isn’t actually marked on the map! If you’re trying to plan your route, it occupies the
space above where it says Brunshaw Road. You should be able to see this on most of the larger area maps.
For a map centring on Turf Moor, click here.
The maps, as with all external links throughout the Burnley pub guide, will open in a new window. This
should enable you to follow the map and the text at the same time.
For each pub, there’s at attempt at describing what you might expect, some information about what beer
they sell and some personal opinion. We’ll also try to give you some idea where a pub is. At the end of the
entry are whatever contact details we have – in most cases a phone number. If a pub has a website and we know
about it there will be a link, however poor that website may be. For each pub, there’s also a link to a map.
The arrow points more or less to where the pub is.
We also provide links to the sites of independent breweries when these are mentioned in the text.
This guide was last fully updated in November 2002.
