122 The Yew Tree - Balderstone

(Acknowledgements  to  www.derekparsons.com  for  the  picture )

First  visited  : 2  April  2016

This  was  a  long-delayed  visit  and  something  of  a  nostalgia  trip.

I  used  to  see  The  Yew  Tree  every day between  1978  and  1983  from  the  windows  of  my  last  school  Bishop  Henshaw  RC  Memorial  School.  The  school's  cross  country  course  , such  as  it  was, went  right  past  it .  A  few  months  before  I  went  to  the  school,  my  Mum  had  dined at  the  Yew  Tree   with  her  playgroup colleagues , in  the  pub's  most  distinctive  feature, a  genuine  Pullman  railway  carriage  which  had  been  parked  beside  it  since  1968. The  carriage  apparently  remained  there  until  1998  when  it  became  too  costly  for  the  pub  to  repair  so  it  was  sold  on  to  the  East  Lancashire  Railway.

Some  of  the  sixth  formers  used  the  pub's  car  park  ; whether  or  not  they  paid  something  for  this  I  couldn't  say.

There  was , probably  still  is , a  bus  stop  right  outside  it  which  I  used  when  returning  from  after  school  activities.

The  pub's  had  a  big  face  lift  since  then  and  is  quite  odd  inside. When  you  go  through  the  front  door  you're  into  a  beige-painted   corridor  and  it's  not  immediately  obvious  where  the  bar  is. In  fact  it's  the  second  door  on  the  right. The  pub  still  does  food  but  I  didn't  sample  any  of  it. It's  spotlessly  clean  and  well  kept.

I  went  in  a  rather  odd  front  lounge  with  painted  photos  of  Edwardian  ( I'm  guessing ) people  whose  names  meant  absolutely  nothing  to  me. But  it  was  the  view  from  the  window  that  captivated  me. Bishop  Henshaw's  has  physically  disappeared ( it  became  known  as   St  Cuthbert's  in  an  unnecessary  sop  to  the  failed  middle  schools  that  used  to  feed  it,  when  they  were  abolished  in  1989 ). Apart  from  a  small  sub-station  on  the  far  left  of  the  site,  all  the  buildings  I  knew   have  been  razed  to  the ground  and  replaced  by  new  ones . I  had  been  back  the  odd  time  for  summer  fetes  and  things  in  the  nineties  but  now  it  is  no  more. There  was  nothing  of  any  great  architectural  merit  to  mourn  but  one's  past  gets  less  tangible  by  the  day  and  sights  like  that  bring  it  home  to  you.