Anybody ever frequent Bellhouse WMC

[redted50]

Just found out they no longer have turns on Sat or Sundays now.Gotta say thats so sad.We moved up here in the late 80s & started using the club,the place was packed every weekend,very friendly place,met loads of friends,saw some fantastic acts (plus 1 or 2 not so clever) beer was cheap & good.Now its gone down the pan & I can't understand why?What a shame.

[handypandy]

Sign of the times I'm afraid. I went in occasionally as my father was the resident organist there for 30 odd years and yes, it did seem a friendly club..........He worked 6 nights a week plus Sunday lunchtime for all that time. He eventually retired through ill health.......following all these years of service, after he left, he never received a single phone call or an enquiry about how he was, so I'm not so sure about 'friendly'.

[chubby69]

i still go in it as changed that much no kids allowed either was in sunday a couple wasent pleased over bands on sunday nights

[lakerman]

Sign of the times I'm afraid. I went in occasionally as my father was the resident organist there for 30 odd years and yes, it did seem a friendly club..........He worked 6 nights a week plus Sunday lunchtime for all that time. He eventually retired through ill health.......following all these years of service, after he left, he never received a single phone call or an enquiry about how he was, so I'm not so sure about 'friendly'.

 

Hi handypandy, I was in there a few months ago. What a dump (sorry but it's true) I don't think it's been decorated since your dad played there. It's rumoured that the club is on borrowed time. It will be very sad if it does close, as with many other clubs/pubs at the present time. Unfortunately it's got nothing going for it sorry to say.

[redted50]

Firth Park Club & Lane Top Club seem to do alright,same catchment area,on a main bus route etc.I think the trouble is,young kids don't want to join clubs,they'd rather go down town & pay extortionate prices.When you think about it,practically every club had a football team,snooker team etc.plus day trips to the coast,all for nowt.Sadly,all thats about gone gone now.You only have to look in the parks now,there's hardly any football now.Makes you wonder how these young families entertain their kids.

[Angilaruk]

My other half used to frequent regularly when he lived in the area, and his parents were regulars too. We didn't even go for the last New Years Eve .... although it wasn't missed to be honest.

 

It seems that most WMC's are now a thing of the past.

 

Angi

[G12Ravda]

My old club, Darnall Libs, closed, after a fire, a couple of years ago. I'm afraid Bellhouse and a lot more will close, before long. They don't hold the attraction they once had. We lived on Bellhouse Road, back in the 70's and went in the club once or twice with Marti Caine & her husband, Malcolm. They had a steak-house on Bellhouse & we managed a paper-shop,just down from them. Good old days heh?

[JohnB_Zurich]

The market they supplied is no longer there. They used to have a kid's seaside trip every year, now they go on foreign holidays and the kids want Disney World. They used to have a kid's Christmas Show / Panto, I think Sally Carmichael's Dance School provided some of the cast as well as the dancers (Marti Caine was one of the troupe), now they watch TV, play their electronic devices etc, haunt the shopping centres.

 

The beer was exceptionally cheap because the CIU owned the Federation Brewery on Tyneside and supplied it at cost; the Fed Brewery was sold to Newcastle Breweries which in turn was sold to Heineken and Carlsberg and asset stripped. The beer isn't cheap any more. Bingo isn't an attraction any more. The old cabaret acts have gone and with them the old club circuit and the old agents. I can remember when Jo Cocker was Indian Joe and the Braves.

 

Whilst I'm on here, I was told by relatives my father used to be the club secretary late 1950s and his grip on the club became so strong that to prise his fingers off the reins of power a group of disaffected members took legal action against him and the club. During the proceedings a barrister is supposed to have said to my father "You're just another Little Caesar, aren't you" and afterwards he frequented Hartley House and The Limes WMCs, for ever known as "Little Caesar".

 

Anybody know anything more to this tale?

[redted50]

When I joined in the 80s there was an old fellow caled Jack Blagden used to run it.Sadly he died last year.Would he have been your dad?

[JohnB_Zurich]

No, he was not. My father, Little Caesar, was secretary in the late 1950s. The legal action was successful and from the beginning of the 1960s he did not use Bellhouse Road Club. Whether he was excluded from Bellhouse or kept away because he had so many enemies there I don't know. He went into local politics and became a councillor, some said to try to use his influence there to get his own back on the people involved in his removal. When he bore a grudge, he really bore that grudge to his dying day - which was in 1974.

 

Before Bellhouse Road WMC I think he went in the Park WMC & Institute on Duke Street, that was when we lived on City Road, I remember going there for kids Christmas party. My father was born on Sorby Street but for most of his childhood and early 20s he grew up on the Manor. Although the family originally came from the village of Nethershire Green in C19 when it was part of Ecclesfield, what became Bellhouse Road shops at junction of Nethershire & Bellhouse.