IT WAS one of the oldest inns in Darwen, perhaps the oldest. Nobody ever called it the Cranberry Fold. It was known for over 250 years simply as “Gronny’s”.

A track out of town led to it, a couple of miles to the south-east, and from there it was a short trek to pick up the Roman Road that went over the moorland heights between Manchester and Ribchester.

Nothing much happened at “Gronny’s”. It was just a quiet watering hole in the middle of nowhere; shelter for the night could be had for coppers.

And then, with a scream on the saxophone and a thud on the drums, popular music suddenly took off.

It was the mid-60s and the Cranberry Fold was in the thick of it.

Owner Bob Horrocks, an Egerton-based entrepreneur, had made the remote, moorland pub his business HQ, and he decided, almost on a whim, to vastly extend the building and launch a rival to the North West’s top variety centres.

Over the next few years some of the country’s top entertainers attracted crowds from all over Lancashire for the summer seasons.

Shirley Bassey was an early arrival and she was followed by the Shadows, Morecambe and Wise, Cilla, Lulu, Tommy Cooper, Engelbert, Norman Wisdom and many more.

Lancashire Telegraph:

There were three bars and a large restaurant and topping everything were a couple of enormous cut-glass chandeliers.

It was £5 to see Tom Jones and Audrey Kenyon, as she then was, decided she couldn’t afford it as she and her husband Robin were spending every spare penny they had on rebuilding one of the old cottages just round the corner at Cranberry Bottoms.

“That was over 50 years ago. And I still haven’t seen Tom Jones live,” she smiled.

In 1973 Greenall Whitley took a long lease and renamed it the Cranberry Fair. It had everything and was billed as “the most lavishly decorated, exciting Entertainment Centre in the North.”

It had a circus-like atmosphere with go-go dancers cavorting in a swimming pool alongside a disco with a mirrored dance floor.

In September 1979 it became Bogart’s nightclub – with lashings of Hollywood glamour and strobe lighting.

It is particularly remembered around town for its Thursday-night teenage discos.

Everybody went there. Emma Stanley recalled: “I often got ready at Beverly Morris’s house and her dad would give us a lift up there. Cranberry lane was full of kids walking up.

“Occasionally me and Kathy Gibson would buy a big bottle of cider from Wibis and chug it on the way up. Dancing to Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. Mad nights. Great fun.”

By the mid 80s the Cranberry was back to being just a pub and later it was flattened for housing.

But the memories live on...

Research by Brian Hilton