If you gander along Fishergate from the train station towards town you swiftly reach Fox Street on the left, down which two famous old Preston hostelries, the Exchange and the Fox and Grapes used to sit side by side. I believe they were both Matthew Brown brewery pubs back in the day and I used to visit them regularly, more so the Exchange which subsequently morphed into a music bar called Kuckoo and the Fox into an establishment that I think was called Beachcomber.
The Exchange pub and you can see part of the Fox and Grapes to the left of picture. Image Credit blogspot.com
Opposite the pubs is another road called Surgeon Court which contains St Wilfred’s primary school. The reason I have cited an obscure school is that for three years I used to attend there when I was a member of St Wilfred’s cub scouts (dib dib dib!) in the late 1970’s, which prefaced fun trips to the scout camp at Waddecar and including walking up Beacon Fell as a large group at midnight on a snowy New Year’s Eve.
Surgeons Court runs into Charnley Street where you can find an underground access road to what was the Debenhams car park adjacent to the main station. You would also have found Preston Korova Arts Café and Bar which ran from May 2013 to April 2016, and I think the latest pursuit of the owners of that building now is a Tapas Bar. It was a small establishment and they used to have comedy and open mic nights and occasionally gigs there.
On one such night in November 2014 we saw an acoustic set by a local band called Moon and the Beams who class themselves ironically as slightly-delic. They supported Blossoms on their album launch tour at the nearby Blitz venue and are still active and released their self-titled debut album in 2021.
Preston Korova Bar. Image Credit blogpreston.co.uk
The village of Woodplumpton is located about five miles north of Preston city centre. It used to provide the start point of the 180-bus route which provided a priceless quick bus on Friday and Saturday nights in the 1980’s when it passed the end of my road on the dot at 18.50 to arrive in town for the pubs opening at 7pm, no all-day opening hours in those days! The village only ever had one pub, the Wheatsheaf which I believe is still in existence and the road through could be a valuable alternate route if the traffic clogged up around the M6/M55 Broughton roundabout.
Nearby to there was Woodplumpton Bowling Club where in 2015 I attended my parents 50th wedding celebrations. I shall only suffice to say that my relationship to my parents was extremely strained by this stage prior to the elastic breaking for good two years later. They had hired a band called Frolicking Pete and the Fumbling Fingers Ceilidh band who played barn dance and hoe down songs only serving to add to the surreal nature of the evening!
The suburb of Plungington used to be a vibrant spot for pubs as it has always been predominately a student area due to its close location to the University, but these boozers have thinned out immensely over the years. One establishment nearby, buried behind the seemingly ever-present Bamboo Chinese takeaway is the Preston Emmanuel Social Club.
Preston Emmanuel social club. Image Credit whatpub.com
The venue, previously a Labour club has been there for over 100 years, but I had never graced its doors. It nearly perished in 2018 but at that point new owners took over and opened a large function room to increase revenue.
I attended there a couple of year earlier in 2016 for my pal Bicker’s 50th birthday party with people as far afield as Bournemouth in attendance. We were in the smaller function room and whilst we were in residence a local artist called Stuart May performed a short acoustic set.
I assume the follow up to this category will be a short walk from the Emmanuel to plungy road and involve a ‘monk’ & some gravy ? (You can ‘bisto’ the post to me if you like mate ..)