Home > Durham > Barnard Castle > Oddfellows Arms Oddfellows Arms
Date of photo: 2012	Picture source: Peter Clarke
The Oddfellows Arms was situated on Bridgegate. This pub closed in the 1990s.
I now live in East Anglia, but was raised in the North East and was a pupil at Barnard Castle School between 1962 - 1972. The town had many more pubs then, and the Oddfellows was one of them. In those days, and it seems strange now, but drinking was largely tolerated by the school. The masters drank in the Golden Lion, older boys in the Turks Head and the Raby Arms. Younger pupils, by which I suppose would be 16 year olds, would head for the Oddfellows. We would not be allowed in the bar but it had an off-sales counter where we bought pint bottles of Newcastle Amber Ale and went off to some woodland or riverbank to drink them. I don't recall we were ever questioned about our age, either at the Oddfellows or indeed in the Raby Arms or the Turks Head when we achieved 6th form status!
Stephen Wood (December 2016)
Do you have any anecdotes, historical information, updates or photos of this pub? Become a contributor by submitting them here. Like this site? Follow us on
Contacts
Make email contact with other ex-customers and landlords of this pub by adding your details to this page.
Name Dates Comments Susan Clarke 1957 to c1964 My parents ran the pub during this time. My sister and I were only 1 and 3 years of age when we arrived and a few years later my mother gave birth to my brother then my younger sister. Running the pub with 4 small children couldn't have been easy. I have happy memories of my time at the Oddfellows Arms and also living in Barnard Castle.