The Malt has had a chequered recent history, feeling to be in decline for the last decade. I caught the very tail end of its busy years at the end of the 90s, when there’d be a decent dinnertime crowd and a queue for the bar at weekends. Both of these are fast-fading memories. Stephen Hughes of the Blackburn & District Pubs (Past & Present) Facebook group reported that barrelage fell from 238 in 2004 down to 102 for 2007, where less than 150 barrels a year is seen as a bad sign. It isn’t just the Malt that’s suffered in this way, of course – much of the rest of Blackburn town centre has gone down the same road and it creates a kind of gravity effect with the combined pull of mass decline dragging individual pubs that try to break free down with it.
The subject of the town centre is something I don’t mean to go into here, though, as there are many things to consider about that which need more attention. Returning to the Malt, it appears it may be re-opening soon as it has been removed from Fleurets. It was listed on there for £175,000 which many agree was a good price. It has either been sold or withdrawn for unknown reasons, so we can only hope it’s the former and will be re-opening soon.
The Malt as it stood in 2009. Photo courtesy of Robert Wade on the Blackburn & District Pubs (Past & Present) Facebook group.
I’ve talked with many people about this particular pub and it seems something of a quandary. Everything feels like it adds up to a great pub:
- the central location near college and the office side of town,
- it sits in the middle of the run across town (roughly a line from the Postal Order to O’Neills),
- it’s a decent sized building,
- people still have good memories to associate the place with…
…but in recent years it just hasn’t worked. I’ve noticed that in other nearby towns, the real ale pubs are busy but I just can’t imagine that kind of thing working here. There’s no real ale “community” in the town centre – Blackburn has somehow ended up being a desert for it and has no reputation to speak of, so you get the gravity effect again – one pub going it alone isn’t enough to get people down into town for.
Whatever happens to this place, I hope it works out.
Beers · Blackburn · Fleurets · Malt and Hops · The Malt · town centre
