Ardwick Lads Club – Modern Mooch

The history of youth work goes back to the birth of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, which was the first time that young men left their own homes and cottage–industries to migrate to the big towns. The result of this migration was an emergent youth culture in urban areas, which was responded to by the efforts of local people.

Work with young women however was seen as less important, because young women’s needs at this time were seen as being centred on homemaking, which were already, supposedly, provided for in the home.

By 1959 widespread moral panic in the press about teenage delinquency led the British government to look into a national response to catering for the needs of young people. In 1960 a government report known as The Albemarle Report was released, which outlined the need for local government agencies to take on responsibility for providing extracurricular activities for young people. Out of this the statutory sector of the youth service was born. For the first time youth centres and fully paid full-time youth workers made an appearance across the whole of Britain.

Wikipedia

Which is where I enter this short history, attending the Broadoak Youth Club in Ashton, during the late 60s early 70s. These were days of ping pong, snooker, spinning 45s and drinking pop if you had the coppers.

Council run, housed in an architectural style best described as bunker like.

I uncovered a little of Manchester’s youth club history during my travels.

The Ardwick Lads’ and Mens’ Club on Palmerston Street, latterly the Ardwick Youth Centre, opened in 1897 and is believed to be Britain’s oldest purpose-built youth club still in use and was until earlier in 2012. Designed by architects W & G Higginbottom, the club, when opened, featured a large gymnasium with viewing gallery – where the 1933 All England Amateur Gymnastics Championships were held – three fives courts, a billiard room and two skittle alleys – later converted to shooting galleries. Boxing, cycling, cricket, swimming and badminton were also organised. At its peak between the two world wars, Ardwick was the Manchester area’s largest club, with 2,000 members.

On the 10th September 2012 an application for prior notification of proposed demolition was submitted on behalf of Manchester City Council to Manchester Planning, for the demolition of Ardwick Lads’ Club of 100 Palmerston Street , citing that there was “no use” for the building in respect to its historic place within the community as providing a refuge and sporting provision to the young of Ancoats.

Whilst cycling through Gorton, I passed the now defunct West Gorton Youth Centre.

Intrigued I started to dig a little deeper, I remembered playing five-a-side at Crossley House in Openshaw.

Openshaw Lad’s Club was founded in November 1888 by William John Crossley. It was previously known as the Gorton and Openshaw Working Lad’s Club and the Crossley Lad’s Club. The Crossley family financed the club up to 1941 and they built the club premises, Crossley House to commemorate Sir William Crossley after his death in 1911. The building was opened on 1 September 1913. In July 1941 the premises were handed over to the National Association of Boy’s Clubs and a management committee was formed to administer the club

Simon Inglis gives the architect as John Broadbent; Buildings of England names the architect as James Barritt Broadbent.

Architects of Greater Manchester

Stalybridge born outside right Tommy Broad started with Redgate Albion in 1902 spending time at Manchester City without making their first eleven before playing for Denton Wanderers in 1903 and Openshaw Lads Club in 1904 from where he joined Second Division West Bromwich Albion in September 1905 making his Football League debut at Wolverhampton Wanderers that September. After a single goal in 15 appearances he moved to Chesterfield Town in the February 1908 scoring 5 goals in 50 appearances for The Spireites over the next two seasons at Saltergate, where he was an ever present in 1908-09.

He moved to Second Division Oldham Athletic in May 1909 and they were promoted as Second Division runners-up in his first season when he missed only one game, scoring a career best 7 goals in the campaign, and in three seasons at Boundary Park he scored 9 goals in 104 appearances. He then played for Bristol City between the summer of 1912 and the suspension of peacetime football due to the onset of the First World War in 1915, where he missed only one match in his first two seasons, scoring 8 times in 111 appearances at Ashton Gate.

During the First World War he served in the Armed Forces and after its resolution he joined First Division Manchester City in the summer of 1919, making 44 appearances in two years at Hyde Road, and helping The Citizens to finish runners up in the League Championship in 1920-21, which he followed with a move to Stoke in the summer of 1921 where Broad along with his younger brother Jimmy helped The Potters to promotion in 1921-22, finishing as Second Division runners-up, although this was followed by relegation the following season.

After three years in The Potteries, where Broad scored 4 times in 89 first team appearances, he moved to the South Coast to join Southampton. Broad still holds the distinction of being the oldest player ever signed by The Saints, being just three weeks short of his 37th birthday. At The Dell, he was used as cover for Bill Henderson and only had a run of three games in October, followed by six more appearances in April. In September 1925, Broad moved to Weymouth of the Western League, before playing out his career with Rhyl.

Vintage Footballers

Manchester City’s ground was up the way at Hyde Road Stadium at the time.

In 2013 disaster struck the club:

A legendary boxing gym – former base of superstars Ricky Hatton and Marco Antonio Barrera – could be forced to shut after it was ransacked by thieves.

Crooks ripped out copper piping and stole priceless equipment from the Shannon Boxing Club in Openshaw.

MEN

Searching the Local Image Collection – revealed other locations.

Hulme 1901

Procter Youth Centre a victim of city’s spending cuts

Procter Youth Centre 1966-2011. Despite being in singularly ugly building, it was very popular, providing a wide range of activities such as pool, football and martial arts, to name but a few. In 2009 the premises were refurbished with £668,000 being spent on a weights room, dance studio, recording studio. Then two years later Manchester City Council did the logical thing – closed it! Some of the eight staff offered to take a pay cut but to no avail. There were plans to use the building as a pupil referral unit. Today the building stands in the middle of wasteland that is the process of redevelopment.

Steve Nesbitt

Hulme 1972

Ancoats 1962

Ancoats Youth Club had sadly ceased being a place for the community to come together and use the facilities a number of years before it became a bed shop before it was finally demolished in 2011, with yet another community resource gone forever.

HistoryMe

Ancoats

Moss Side 1972

Blackley 1969

Victoria Park St Edwards Youth Club 1976

Fielden Park 1972

Newall Green 1972

Royal Oak Community Centre Baguley

Bringing us back to Gorton – the unoccupied and demolition ready Youth Centre.

Surrounded by new-build and no stranger to a passing Bentley.

Where the state has created a vacuum the charitable sector steps in.

Designed by Seven Architecture, the Manchester Youth Zone East will be the second of its type in Greater Manchester, following the Factory Youth Zone in Harpurhey.

Place North West

HideOut Youth Zone is a registered charity based in Manchester and has been in existence since 2019.

We are a Youth Zone dedicated to providing opportunities and experiences to all local young people.

HideOut

Following years of slow decline the area is on the up.

Linden Homes’ new build properties on Belle Vue Street, Gorton have now completely sold out, with the first of the 14 homes ready for homeowners to move into this month.

The properties are part of the £9m Grace Gardens development, which is situated in a prime location in an up-and-coming part of Greater Manchester.

Linden Homes

Though affordability is always an issue.

Prime L ocation

Manchester now runs three Youth Centres across the city.

To begin at the beginning – some years ago I traced the route of the River Medlock, I chanced upon a forlorn pub called The River, all alone, desolate and boarded up, presiding over an area that I assumed, would once have supplied ample trade to a busy boozer.

I returned last week in search of some rhyme or reason, for such a seemingly sad and untimely decline.

So here we are back at in Manchester 1813, the seeds of the Industrial Revolution sewn in adjacent Ancoats, the fields of Beswick still sewn with seeds, the trace of Palmerston Street nought but a rural track.

Sited on land between Great Ancoats Street and Every Street was Ancoats Hall, a post-medieval country house built in 1609 by Oswald Mosley, a member of the family who were Lords of the Manor of Manchester. The old timber-framed hall, built in the early 17th century, and demolished in the 1820s was replaced replaced by a brick building in the early neo-Gothic style.

This would become the Manchester Art Museum, and here the worst excesses Victorian Capitalism were moderated by philanthropy and social reform.

When the Art Museum opened, its rooms, variously dedicated to painting, sculpture, architecture and domestic arts, together attempted to provide a chronological narrative of art, with detailed notes, labels and accompanying pamphlets and, not infrequently, personal guidance, all underlining a sense of historical development.

Housing and industry in the area begins to expand, railways, tramways, homes and roads are clearly defined around the winds of the river.

In 1918 the museum was taken over by the city, it closed in 1953 and its contents were absorbed into the collection of Manchester City Art Gallery, as the State increasingly took responsibility for the cultural well being of the common folk.

The building was finally demolished in the 1960’s – just as the area, by now a dense warren of back to back terraces, was to see further change.

Along the way was the the River Inn, seen here with a fine Groves and Whitnall’s faience tiled frontage.

The street also offered rest, relaxation and refreshment through the Church, Pineapple and Palmerston pubs, as recored here on the Pubs of Manchester blog.

The River seen here in the 1970’s struggled on until 2007.

Further along we find the Ardwick Lads Club, further evidence of the forces of social reform, that sadly failed to survive the forces of the free market and the consequent Tory cuts in public spending and wilful Council land-banking.

The Ardwick Lads’ and Mens’ Club, now the Ardwick Youth Centre, opened in 1897 and is believed to be Britain’s oldest purpose-built youth club still in use [and was until earlier in 2012]. Designed by architects W & G Higginbottom, the club, when opened, featured a large gymnasium with viewing gallery – where the 1933 All England Amateur Gymnastics Championships were held – three fives courts, a billiard room and two skittle alleys (later converted to shooting galleries). Boxing, cycling, cricket, swimming and badminton were also organised. At its peak between the two world wars, Ardwick was the Manchester area’s largest club, with 2,000 members.

At the top turn of the street stood St Mary’s – the so called Lowry church.

Used as a location for the film adaptation of Stan Barstow’s A Kind Of Loving

The homes and industry attendant schools and pubs were soon to become history, all that you see here is more or less gone. Slum clearance, the post-war will to move communities away from the dense factory smoke, poor housing stock and towards a bright shiny future elsewhere.

Whole histories have subsequently been subsumed beneath the encroachment of buddleia, bramble, birch and willow.