DOES anyone remember the pub in Grimshaw Park, Blackburn, which bore the curious name ‘Who Could a Thowt It’?

And that immediately begs another question — how did it get its name?

Back in 1967, James Hartley, who had been licensee at the Royal Oak Hotel, Darwen and the Mitre in William Hopwood Street, Blackburn, told this tale.

It came from his daughter-in-law, Eva Thompson before her marriage, who had been born at the pub in 1930.

The story went that a clogger used to have a little shop at the bottom of Haslingden Road and, being a convivial man who missed the company of his cronies in the neighbouring alehouses, started inviting one and then another of them to join him over a few bottles, keeping him company while he worked.

The custom grew until the shop became a regular meeting place, with an occasional barrel supplementing the bottle supply.

Eventually, a local brewery heard of the development and sent along a representative who, seeing the crowd round the busy clogger, said: “I think we had better buy this and make it into an alehouse.”

On hearing this one of the cronies came out with: “Who Could a Thowt It? and thus the pub was named.

Do you have any stories of how other pubs, anywhere in East Lancashire, came to be named?