VARIETY lost its last proper stage in Blackburn when the old Grand Theatre closed in 1956 - 20 years after the town's premier platform for touring 'turns,' the next-door Palace Theatre, turned itself into a cinema.

But who remembers the town's other immensely-popular vaudeville venue, The Garrison Theatre?

It not only put a smile on thousands of faces and played to packed houses - as this photograph of one of its audiences reveals - but its shows were also greatly appreciated by absent Blackburnians in places as far apart as Iceland and India.

The 'theatre' as such did not exist. For 'Garrison Theatre' was simply the name given to the Sunday-night concerts staged during the Second World War in King George's Hall to provide free entertainment for the thousands of troops billeted in an around Blackburn.

The shows also raised money for the Mayoress's Comforts Fund for parcels of treats to be sent to servicemen and women from Blackburn stationed all over the world and to prisoners of war in camps in Germany and Italy.

But it had another aim, too - that of preventing bored, off-duty and far-from-home members of the forces getting up to no good by getting them off Blackburn's streets at a time when the black-out added even more grimness to the old-time British Sunday and virtually everywhere was closed.

For as an Army Welfare Officer major wrote in praise of the Garrison Theatre's diversion in a souvenir booklet issued to mark the adieu of its fourth season when it staged its 128th show in March, 1944: "There is a long period between evening church services and bedtime, during which there is little alternative to walking the streets."

And a brigadier added: "Although the hospitality and kindness of the people of Blackburn have been quite exceptional, there is a still a strong need for some place where the soldier can get out of barracks and be suitably entertained. The boredom and dangers of hanging about the streets need hardly be stressed." Yet, despite the respite that the shows brought to the troops on what would have been an otherwise-bleak rest day and regardless of the comforts that the admission charges for civilians supplied for forces folk and PoWs overseas, some regarded the Garrison Theatre as a moral outrage - because it took place on a Sunday.

Indeed, as is disclosed in the souvenir brochure - lent to 'Looking Back' by local history enthusiast Grace Webster, of Dukes Brow, Blackburn - its critics included one "powerful and active opponent" in the form of the Lord's Day Observance Society. In 1942, it threatened to invoke the Act of Parliament - passed in the reign of George III - from which it took its name .

And said the booklet: "It seemed at the time, with the restrictions and limitations needed to conform with this kill-joy Act, that it would be well nigh impossible to carry on.

Acts long booked had to be cancelled, others cut to ribbons - but Garrison came through, smiling, perhaps a little grimly."

Going on to raise the then-considerable sum of £10,000 for services welfare funds by the end of their fourth season, the concerts - organised by the Mayor's Entertainments Committee and drawing considerably on local talent and from the services - started in August, 1940, on a "fairly high cultural level." But the brochure added: "It was soon realised that audiences wanted the emphasis put on entertainment - comedy, good rollicking choruses and popular song hits were accordingly introduced."

The programme (above) for Garrison's 100th performance in March, 1943, shows the sort of fare that was assembled by producer and compere Jack Barrett - a well-known performer and organiser. Another popular feature of the shows was the community singing conducted by John Stirrup, later become a Blackburn alderman.

In the grim days of wartime on the Home Front, the shows provided one and a half hours of brightness for vast numbers when Blackburn truly was a garrison town where during those years tens of thousands of British and Allied troops were billeted - a fact underlined by another souvenir brochure lent by Grace, that commemorating the visit of the Princess Royal to Blackburn in 1947 to receive donations from the town's YMCA to the country's War and National Service Fund.

For the booklet reveals that during the war 20,000 men from the forces were given sleeping accommodation at the YMCA premises in Limbrick (pictured left), which became the Sir Charles Napier Hotel in 1967 following the Association's move to new premises.

Another 700 troops - for whom the YMCA's marquee provided a canteen and recreational facilities - were in a tented camp at Witton Park and eight regiments and thousands of American troops who were billeted in the converted Hornby Mills at Brookhouse were provided with a YMCA-run canteen, library, recreation room and information bureau.