LONG famed as Blackburn's "Street of Inns" -- it had 16 pubs and beerhouses when the landlord of one of them, Will Durham, compiled his potted history of the town in 1866 -- Northgate was on the brink on having one fewer when licensee James Simm posed in the doorway of the Mason's Arms.

He had been the tenant there less than a year when the licence was referred for compensation in 1906 in a scheme by the authorities to reduce Blackburn's plethora of pubs -- then numbering about 430.

Shown with a pair of horse collars hung on its wall at far right, the Mason's Arms, which closed on October 10 that year, stood on Northgate next to the old Blackburn Times building, on a site later occupied by the grocery attached to Blackburn Co-op's Emporium, which nowadays is the town's Central Library.

James Simm, who was in his mid-70s when this picture -- lent by his grandson, 83-year-old reader Mr Arthur Simm, of Bank Hey Close, Sunny Bower, Blackburn -- was taken and had plenty of experience in the licensed trade. Hailing from Balderstone, he ran Higher Commons Farm there while running a building business at the same time and for some seven years was also licensee of the old Five Barred Gate Hotel at nearby Samlesbury-- outside which he is pictured at the right of the doorway in this 1890s view (below). He also represented Balderstone for 26 years on Blackburn district's Board of Guardians, which administered the poor laws and dispensed relief.

The Five Barred Gate, which took its name from an old toll gate close by, was demolished in 1960 when it was in the path of the new dual carriageway leading to the M6 motorway.

It was replaced by a much larger public house of the same name which was expanded to become a Blackburn brewer Matthew Brown's flagship hotel, the Trafalgar, which nowadays is the Swallow Hotel.

From the Samlesbury pub, James Simm moved to the Alexandra Hotel in Dukes Brow, Blackburn, which he managed for seven years before his brief stint at the Mason's Arms. He died in 1916. aged 86.