St James's Street
The main street through the centre of town is St
James’s Street, now mostly pedestrianised. Walk through here on a football Saturday and
you’ll be surprised how many Burnley shirts you see. Opposition shirts may elicit
comment. It’s mostly shops, although there are some cafés, including a growing number of decent coffee places.
At the end of the street nearest Turf Moor there
aren't many places to eat apart from McDonald’s – if you count McDonald's as a
place to eat – although the other, non-pedestrianised end, past Mark's and Spencer's,
turns into a downmarket kebabs and taxi offices type street.
Starting at this furthest end from Turf Moor, on
the non-pedestrianised bit you have the Cross Keys, of which I know nothing, and the Garden Bar. Then on the car free zone moving closer to the ground there
are a clutch of pubs close to Manchester Road on your right: the
Old Red Lion, the Swan, the White Lion and Yates’s. Sadly, there is not much beer to be
had round here, and a visitor who hasn't done their research is unlikely to stumble on a pint in the heart of Burnley.
Close to the Garden Bar is the new town centre
club shop, Turf Moor in Town, and at this end of St James's Street, over the roundabout on
Westgate, the Plane Trees is supposed to offer cheap accommodation.
On Parker Lane, between the White Lion and
Yates’s, there's the Golden Fish Bar. Turning left from there will take you to the
bus station, past Bootlegger's Music Bar - whatever that is - and the Sidewalk
53 bar. Just around the corner in front of the new, allegedly space age bus station, is another new Burnley pub,
a branch of the Litten Tree chain.
To the right of St James's Street as you head towards Turf Moor is a bit of a
nightclub area, if that is what you're looking for, with Burnley's hedonistic young and
reputedly half the team living it up in Mean Cats, Paradise Island and Smackwater Jack's.
As most of these change their name every year or so and it's not really my scene, this may not be accurate.
Hammerton Street seems to be in the ascendancy as the nightclub zone these days anyway.
Left of St James's Street is the main
Charter Walk shopping centre, with the same high street names as everywhere else,
including a branch of WH Smith's, which is your best bet if you need to buy a map of the
town. Down next to the Charter Walk carpark is what used to be the Bridge
Inn.
Also on St James's Street is a branch of Burton's. No big deal, but this
was
where the Bull Hotel once was, where way back in 1882, Burnley FC was formed.
Click here for a map of Burnley centring on the area covered by this crawl.
The
Garden Bar
Corner of Brown Street and St James’s Street
Opinion is mixed on the Garden Bar. I quite like
it. Most other people think it’s crap. Okay, I exaggerate slightly, as at least one of our local
researchers rates it highly, and it’s clearly
gained the high opinion of CAMRA, who have a habit of including it in their esteemed
Good Beer Guide. It's one of four Burnley entries in the 2003 guide. This doubtless has more to do with the
consistently high quality of the Lees beer than anything
else, and also the scarcity
value of that Middleton brew in these parts. Apart from here, you'll not get Lees for miles around.
But I wonder
what eager GBG readers keen to sample the top pubs of this old mill town make of the
place. Outside it’s a squat, exceptionally ugly modern building, with a low flat roof
on which a barking dog seems permanently to be chained. Inside it was once all plastic
plants and fake patio. The ambience was early 80s Club Tropicana done on the cheap. And
the reason many people don’t like it is that is, at various times during the week, a gay pub, and like
everywhere else outside Soho, there’s no shortage of homophobia in town. Sadly, a refurbishment the other year
took away all the fake foliage, leaving the place looking emptier, with a bare stage
in the middle of the room and rather sparse seating. Plastic vegetation might not have
been to everyone's taste, but I feel it's a duller place without it.
Thankfully, the Lees bitter is still there. I can attest to the quality of the
beer, and also the cheapness. Fight to make it your round in here.
It was a particularly fine pint on a recent visit
(September 2002). It’s weird, because the last thing you’d expect somewhere
like this to sell is a decent pint, but they do and have done for a while now, so get
stuck in.
It's always been quiet on a Saturday lunchtime when
I've called in. Sometimes our lot have been the only people there. But when I've dropped in for one on
a Saturday night, the tone has been quite different.
Then it's had bouncers on the
door and very loud music, although it still hasn't been particularly busy. The Saturday night crowd
tends to be young, fun-seeking, and, heartwarmingly, mixed between gay and straight.
They dance.
I suspect our small group are the
only people who come in here for the beer on Saturday nights. The beer is still excellent, though.
The Garden Bar has now followed the
Sparrow Hawk's lead, and apparently now opens until 1am from Thursday to
Saturday. Blimey. For a pre-match bite, they also offer pie and peas for a bargain £1. "Peas were good," said our guinea pig.
The Garden Bar, 133-135 St James's Street, Burnley BB11 1PD.
Tel 01282 414895.
Click here for a
map.
Becko's Burnley boozer of the month, October 2002
The
Old Red Lion
Corner of Manchester Road and St James's Street
The Red Lion has long had a reputation for good food, but
sadly it’s a while since this Thwaites
pub served anything other than smooth. There
was a time when this was a good stop for a quick one on the way back up for the train,
being strategically placed at the foot of steep Manchester Road. Not so now, and there are better places. They were
never very keen on football shirts, including home ones.
The Old Red Lion, 4 Manchester Road, Burnley BB11 1HH.
Tel 01282 455360.
Click here for a
map.
The Swan
St James's Street
Time was that the Swan used to be an interesting little pub
with an rather primitive interior. After refurbishment some years back, it’s now a
standard and unremarkable little pub. That's a shame, because it occupies one of the older buildings in Burnley
centre, and apparently once housed the local nick, with cells in the cellar.
Wearyingly, although it’s another Thwaites
house we’re once
again talking smooth. It’s admittedly some years since I’ve been to the Swan, but that's because
there’s never been good reason to. Stuck in the middle of a row of shops, you do
wonder whose local it is. Still, it seems to attract a fairly young Saturday lunchtime crowd.
The Swan, 44 St James's Street, Burnley BB11 1NQ.
Tel 01282 424035.
Click here for a
map.
The
White Lion
Corner of St James's Street and Parker Lane, opposite Yates’s
After a beerless spell, the once promising White Lion now apparently has the real stuff available again.
I haven't had a chance to call in lately, but I'm told that
Thwaites' revival of the old (Mitchell's) Lancaster Bomber
is now on sale. That's good news, as for a while it looked like this place had gone the way of other town centre Thwaites'
pubs and succumbed to smooth.
As for the pub, it’s
large, but doesn’t feel like it, as it has a number of cosy rooms, including
a comfortable taproom, and was given a thorough but sympathetic facelift a few years back.
This became a near compulsory stop during the spell when they had real Thwaites' bitter available. Here's hoping they
stick with the Lancaster bomber. It's in a very handy place for travellers looking for a stop between
Manchester
Road and Church Street.
The White Lion, 22 St James's Street, Burnley BB11 1NQ.
Click here for a
map.
Yates’s
Corner of St James's Street and Parker Lane, opposite the White Lion
It’s a Yates’s, so what do you need to
know? It’s like all the others. They used at least to try to do something different, these places, and there
remain good examples of the old, highly decorated style, but now
they generally have standard chain-pub interiors. Oddly enough, Yates's still provides a real ale option.
With some
irony, it's Thwaites bitter that they sell.
You can't get in Thwaites pubs any more, it seems, but you can
get it here. I last visited in December 2001 on that basis, and had a pint that was just the dubious
side of fair.
Despite that it's not a place I like, being frequented by the baseball capped.
A young crowd gathers in here prior to matches for food and drink.
Cliché suited doorman usually patrol. It’s not exactly the least rough
pub in Burnley, and they have been known to lose a window or two on occasion when the
opposition have been suitably high profile. Away fans should definitely give it a miss.
Traditionalists will insist on referring to it as the Boot, as it was the Boot Inn before
Yates’s took over and rebranded, now many years ago.
Yates's Wine Lodge, 18 St James's Street, Burnley BB11 1NG.
Tel 01282 416085.
Click here for a
map.
The
Bridge
Bridge Street
As was. This currently goes under the
stupendously ill-advised sobriquet of Bar Mambo. Shame, because although it was nothing
special before, it's worse now. It used to be a bog standard boozer the right side of decent, welcoming enough,
and selling a reasonanble pint. It also boasted an unspeakable jukebox and undercut the
Sparrow Hawk on pie and peas. We were semi-frequent visitors.
Then it went downhill under new management, and eventually stopped being a pub and became a
bar. They called it 'Bar Mambo'. That was when I stopped going in, but inspired by reports that beer had
returned to the bar, I was last prevailed upon to make a visit in July 2001. I was not
impressed. I think the interior, with its stripped wood floor, was trying to be Mediterranean,
but I found it hard to maintain that illusion in the face of ten minutes' worth of Meatloaf
karaoke. Some of the most atrocious singing in the world evidently goes on here. As for the beer,
it was uninteresting Draught Bass, which isn't great at the best of times, and this wasn't.
It was also quite expensive by Burnley standards. I was told they may have a guest beer in
future, but for the moment I wouldn't deem it worth a
visit. Perhaps one day it will turn back into a pub.
Opposite, if you're feeling hungry, is the Regent Cantonese
restaurant.
Bar Mambo, Bridge Street, Burnley BB11 1AD.
Click here for a
map.
Sidewalk
53
Boot Way
Not my kind of place, and not somewhere for away
fans to be seen. It’s across from the bus station, which can be a magnet for
trouble after games. I have noted draft Bass on hand pump, as I've wandered by in the past.
Wonder if anyone ever drinks it? It's was supposed
to be turning into one of these Goose chain pubs a bit back, but nothing seemed to
happen. Here, it would be an improvement.
Litten Tree
Safeway House, by the bus station
There's been a definite trend in recent years for new pubs to open in Burnley,
and here's one of the newest. It's a large pub in the base of the formerly bleak Safeway House office block, which many
years ago was home to the supermarket of that name.
In fact, it's so new I've not been in yet. Even so, I've got a fair idea of what it
will be like, as these Litten Trees are cropping up all over the place. They're bland and characterless pubs, very much
a sub-Wetherspoon's kind of chain. Still, let us not be churlish. Litten Trees generally offer some sort of real ale, and
the pub is certainly more attractive to look at than the former boarded-up premises which blighted this end of town. An
investigation is called for.
The Litten Tree, Safeway House, Burnley.
Click here for a
map.
Last updated November 2002
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