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Home > Lancashire >
Blackburn > The Oozebooth
The Oozebooth
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The Oozebooth was situated on
the junction of Baswell Road and Oak Street. |
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Source: David Eaves |
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The Oozebooth was a giant of a
pub, one of the oldest and biggest in Blackburn.
Situated on Oak Street, just off St James Road, it has sadly been closed for
many years. A Thwaites pub with very high ceilings and an off sales counter.
Seemingly Thwaites built 4 large pubs at the same time - The Fernhurst at
Ewood was in the same style. |
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Philip Nightingale |
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Oozebooth
Terrace was a short row of terraced houses on an unmade road than ran at
a right angle of Troy Street towards the rear side of Oak Street Mill.
The
Oozebooth truly was a giant of a pub with a coach house and stabling. It
also had a very large bowling green and a large bowling pavilion. At
one time it would have been a busy commercial hotel accommodating
traveling salesmen/business men in a time when salesmen didn't have
company cars but used public transport.
The off
sales counter, referred to by Philip above, was situated on the right
side of the inner entrance hallway and was served by what would be the
rear of the vault bar, the entrance to the vault being the first door on
the right in the outer entrance (vestibule) before you entered the pub
proper. This was, I think, the only bar and people using other rooms in
the pup would use the off sales counter for service. I would imagine
that rooms other than the vault would originally have had a waiter
service from this counter.
The pub had a coach house and stables and a large crown green bowling
green and a large bowling pavillion. The pub covered the whole block
between Bastwell Road and Logwood St. The area is now filled with
private houses. |
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Jim Robinson |
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Back in the late 1960's I moved to Blackburn to work on the Evening
Telegraph where our newsroom clerk/secretary was the daughter of the
landlord of the Oozebooth -- a lovely blonde Lancashire lass called Valerie.
She had an older and equally pretty sister who worked, I think in tele-sales
(adverts). I left the Telegraph more than 40 years ago but wonder what
happened to them? |
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Chris Bates |
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The Oozebooth was on my way to school and I past
it every day; it was a long dropif you looked over the wall from the track
that ran from the top of Troy Street to Holly Street. The short row of
houses that ran from the top of Troy Street’s junction with the track from
London Road and towards the rear wall of Oak Street Mill was Hillmont
Terrace, demolished around 1980 I believe. I walked directly past them every
schoolday for five years when I lived on London Road and went to Cedar
Street School. Oozebooth Terrace however, runs from Shear Brow to Earl
Street/Northfield Road with the original St James’ School (now the infants)
on the Church side and the newer Juniors on the town side. I played across
the fields between Shear Brow and Troy Street when I was kid and remember
when the top section of Earl Street, between Wimberley Street and Northfield
Road, was just a track. In heavy rains, the water ran like a river down that
track, then mysteriously turned near Wimberley Street to go down the back
street between Earl Street and Marsh Street, hitting the houses on London
Road with some force, including The Bennett’s, our friends, who used to have
sandbags piled at their front door! Back to the Oozebooth, it had an awful
snooker table in the 1970s! They did used to put on a good bonfire on Guy
Fawkes night once the bowling green fell out of use. Around 1990 we went
with friends and some idiot let off a rocket horizontally; fortunately one
of our friends, Lynn who now has the Adelphi, stepped in front of a pram
with our daughter in it (quite by chance) and took the rocket on the
backside! She was unharmed by the rocket but scarred for life by the ribbing
she got! I have many tales from Blackburn pubs, I even managed the legendary
Dun Horse for a while |
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John Chamley (March 2015) |
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In 1911 the Landlord was James Hobkirk.
His wife Annie Sophia Rebecca Hobkirk was aunt to my mother Mabel Harmer
Jones. On Census day Sunday April 2nd 1911 my mother was 10 years old and
staying at the Oozebooth Hotel with her aunt and uncle. The census form
shows 5 people at the Hotel on that night. James Hobkirk, Annie Hobkirk,
Mabel Harmer Jones, one servant and one lodger. The account in the survey
mentions a bowling green and my mother told me it was her job to collect the
bowls at the end of each evening, wipe them clean and stack them on the
racks in the pavilion. By 1918 the Hobkirks had given up the pub and
retired.
As a boy in the 1950s I lived on St James Road in Blackburn not too far from
the Oozebooth Hotel which was still a functioning pub. I remember it as a
huge red brick Victorian building like a few more still surviving in
Blackburn at the time. I think the bowling green had vanished during the war |
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John Tomlinson (May 2019) |
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As well as a bowling green at the back
the pub had a ballroom upstairs. The description of the vault and off-sales
is correct. On entering the pub you turned right to reach the vault, or
straight on and round a left-hand corner to reach the snug which had a bench
seat round the side walls. There was also a small games room beyond the
vault and accessible from the vault and the corridor. I don't know when the
pub was built but it was a very impressive building, somewhat incongruous
alongside Oak Street Mill and the terraces of workers' houses. I wonder if
the pub was built in an earlier time before all the houses and was then an
`out of town hotel'? |
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Peter Barnes (January 2020) |
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