Blackbury

Blackbury is the fictional town where the Johnny Maxwell Series books take place. Judging by the BBC TV adaption it is not far from Manchester.

It was also the location of the Arnold Bros (est. 1905) department store until it was demolished and replaced by the Arnco Leisure Centre, and is thus mentioned in the Bromeliad books. (See the annotation under Arnold Bros (est. 1905) for more on its location.)

Notable places

• Blackbury Hill
• The Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall
• The old church, now a community centre
• The Cemetery
• Paradise Street
• The Blackbury Preserves pickle factory
• The Joshua N'Clement Block
• The site of the former Arnold Bros (est. 1905) department store, which mysteriously burnt down in a way the police were never quite able to work out;
• The site of the Grimethorpe Dye and Paint Company, also closed down by the Arnco Group PLC as surplus to requirements;

The other Blackbury

A large number of Pratchett's earlier children’s stories, mostly written as Uncle Jim, are also set in Blackbury, though as much more outlandish events occur there it should be treated as a separate place. These stories include some featured in Dragons At Crumbling Castle, The Witch's Vacuum Cleaner, Father Christmas's Fake Beard, The Time-travelling Caveman and A Stroke of the Pen. A notable feature of this other Blackbury is Even Moor, a “strange mysterious land” north of the town full of weird creatures including Rincemangle and other Gnomes, and an Abominable Snow-Woman and her baby.

Annotations

• Towns "not far from Manchester" include Blackburn and Bury. Put 'em together and what have you got...
• Note that for most British English speakers the e in berry names is a schwa (a neutral vowel), hence "blackberry" and "Blackbury" are both pronounced "blackb'ry" by most British people.
• In Johnny and the Bomb, the Blackbury bypass is described as carrying multiple HGVs "taking a million English razor blades from Sheffield to Italy", which would suggest it is located somewhere in northern Nottinghamshire between the M1 (the most direct north-south route between Sheffield and London) and the A1 (the most direct north-south route between Sheffield and the major European container ports). Based on this, its most likely real-life counterparts or near-lookalikes are Worksop, Newark and Mansfield.
• Grimethorpe is a small former colliery village in South Yorkshire, located between Barnsley and Wakefield. It has never been a major population centre, and has never been big enough to have its own police station.
• It is also worth pointing out the presence of a charming location in rural Oxfordshire called Blewbury (which sports a hostelry called The Blueberry, natch).