By Phil Mellows
It wasn’t so long ago that Clitheroe conjured up for me the image of an aging schoolboy and my childish ear bent to the BBC Light Programme (later Radio 2). The Clitheroe Kid, with the mischievous Jimmy Clitheroe and his obtuse sidekick Alfie ‘Ooh, me leg’ Hall, was my Sunday lunchtime comedy listening, along with The Navy Lark or Round the Horne, which I couldn’t possibly have understood the half of.
Much more recently, when I was looking for somewhere interesting to stay within striking distance of a meeting the following morning with Timothy Taylor’s Brewery in Keighley, it was Clitheroe, Lancs, that popped into my head. Since before lockdown I’d wanted to visit the town’s Bowland Beer Hall, and here was my chance.
The beer hall is part of the Holmes Mill development, a 200-year-old cotton mill that’s been converted into a hotel (where I stayed), restaurant, food hall, cinema and a splendid home for the Bowland Brewery and what it likes to term its “tasting parlour” (pictured).
It’s a spectacular parlour. The island bar at its centre is more than 100 feet long and bristles with 42 handpumps serving the full range of beers made in the brewery that forms the backdrop to the hall, along with a wide selection of guest ales and craft brews.
And down one side there’s another room big enough to house a vast steam engine, bringing a new dimension to pub bric-a-brac. With something to catch the eye wherever you look, it’s a triumph of design.
Bowland Beer Hall is reason enough to visit Clitheroe, but I also wanted to go to a bar called Corto. A short walk across town, it’s run by beer, cider and wine writer Katie Mather and her partner Tom, and it has brought something surprising and altogether delightful to the local drinking scene.
It’s a bright, modern space serving modern craft beers on tap, plus natural ciders and wines. Even some proper vermouth, imported from Barcelona. When I arrived, Katie was busy hosting a wine tasting upstairs.
The draught beer range, poured from taps on the wall behind the bar, is small but carefully chosen, there’s a well-stocked fridge including some rare, aged brews, and the snacks menu includes Danish tinned fish, served in its can, opened, with good bread, toasted, and pickles pickled on the premises. Genius.
And, nearby, I couldn’t help but notice, and pop into, a place called The Beer Shack. It turned out to be a micropub across two floors and a garden. Too big to be micro, perhaps, but it has that micropub feel and attention to beer, both cask and keg. The owners promise their own brews soon.
But that isn’t quite all Clitheroe has to offer. Tom recommended the New Inn round the corner. Buzzing with locals, it’s an old-fashioned, unspoilt, multi-roomed pub of the kind you can still find around northern England if you know where to look. A pint of Moorhouse’s Pride of Pendle completed a perfect night out.
There’s something stirring in the beer scenes in small northern towns. The craft beer revolution was something that happened in the big cities, really, but in these less obvious destinations you can find some amazing stuff going on, and the modern mingles somehow more comfortably with surviving traditional pubs, and all within walking distance.
Take Wirksworth, a quiet market town in Derbyshire. The Royal Oak, a small stone-walled terraced pub opposite the boutique Northern Light Cinema, has long championed good cask beers. And now the Feather Star, a local micropub and record shop, has moved into one half of the town’s old coaching inn, the Red Lion. It has created a quirky, inclusive, modern pub with a craft beer wall behind the handpumps.
And when you’ve ordered your pint, or two-thirds, you can carry it carefully across the gateway where the coaches used to head to the stables at the back, and into the Umami Restaurant, a separate, yet complementary business. Its eclectic, frequently changing, international menu reflects the cuisines encountered by its much-travelled owners.
Behind, the yard rises into a grassy hillock, and you can look down on a busy pub and restaurant, the potential for events in the outside space, and the beginning of a vibrant community hub for the town.
And where Clitheroe and Wirksworth go, others can surely follow.
Small towns, big ambitions
Just back from Shipley, W Yorks and I thoroughly concur with the piece. four cracking pubs in Shipley, Saltaire (next door) and across the moors in Ilkley. All very busy selling beers in very good order (NBSS 3.5 or 4) from a range of local micros, despite the hot weather. But who would have thought that this somewhat depressed post-industrial town would have such beer and such pubs.
Hi Phil we were in Clitheroe earlier in the year - great place - some good Thwaites as well from their new brewery which is nearby. Corto's opening hours worked against us sadly. But this was an eye opener for its interior. https://whatpub.com/pubs/LAE/879/emporium-clitheroe