This Lancashire town is named second best in UK for cosy pubs

GG.co.uk created a handy list of the best-rated pubs with fireplaces in 73 major UK towns and cities. They analysed Google ratings and pub information across every town and city with populations of at least 100,000. Each town or city then received an overall ‘cosiness’ score based on how many of these pubs with real fire also featured large TV screens, showed horse racing, football, cricket or rugby or had a Sky Sport or TNT Sports connection.

Gateshead came out top, but Blackburn came second out of the whole UK, scoring 83.22 per cent on the nation’s cosiness scale.

Which pubs?

There are 30 pubs with fireplaces to choose from in the Blackburn area, with the third-best average Google rating in the UK of 4.41 out of 5. According to researchers, the best ones are Spread Eagle, Royal Oak and Rising Sun, judging by their Google review rates.

Blackburn scored highest of all 73 towns and cities for the most cosy pubs with big screens per capita. 11 out of 30 pubs with real fire feature large screens.

Despite being the largest cities in the UK, Birmingham, Glasgow, London and Manchester ranked last for cosiness appeal from pubgoers. In total, there are at least 1,475 pubs with fireplaces in the UK. 451 of them are connected to Sky Sports, 322 – to TNT Sports, 299 feature big screens, 700 show football, 446 – rugby, 381 – cricket, and 93 broadcast horse racing events.