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 is also the location of the Arnold Bros (est. 1905) department store (demolished and replaced by the Arnco Leisure Centre). It is also referred to in later books of the Bromeliad (Truckers trilogy, which gives the town's name as Grimethorpe, but does mention the Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall). Several of the stories in Dragons At Crumbling Castle take place in Blackbury.

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;

Annotation

Towns "not far from Manchester":- Blackburn; Bury. Please note that in colloquial British English the e in the word berry is a schwa, hence "blackberry" (the fruit, Rubus fruticosus, not the computerised whatnot) is pronounced "blackbury" or "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.