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HIRING FAIR SONG REQUEST CLUB DETAILS NEWS MAGAZINE WIRELESS WAVES FEDERATION HARRY BOARDMAN LINKS OFF THE BEATEN TRACK HOME Other pages are available on this site - please click on HOME to see a complete listing |
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Sunday Club History Page
This page is dedicated to the history of your club. Please send in a couple of paragraphs and pictures of your residents and regulars and I'll put the information on this page.
The Wooden Horse Folk Club Meets at The Junction, News Lane, Rainford
Sunday 8-30pm
Pete
Gleave has sent in the following history of the Wooden Horse Folk Club: The Wooden Horse FC started life as the
Travellers Rest FC in Crab Street, St Helens way back in 1970 or 71. For a good
number of years this club was run by its founder, Graham Tabern and co-residents
Wally Litherland and Len Blackwell, collectively known as Rough Edge. Later
Graham's wife Bernadette joined them. This was a splendid club; much supported
by Bernard, the landlord at the time. We lasted a little while until John went
off to Ireland to learn to play the pipes (failure!!) and Bruce headed for the
Antipodes in search of fame and fortune and a steady job.
Quartz Back in Business (Mike Bartram and Norman
Wilson) replaced Andy Anderson at this time when Andy and Sheila emigrated to
North Wales.
Back In Business The Whole Hog (Rob Peacock and Frank Parks) became residents - great assets to the club. All went well until the landlord put on a Day of Folk on his car park - it was a tremendous event; but unfortunately he didn't apply for a licence and he was heavily fined. Move number 6.
LocTup Together They say every cloud has a silver lining and this was the silver lining for the Wooden Horse. We moved to the Junction at Rainford Junction some 4 miles north of St Helens. A pub with an entertainments licence, a selection of real ales, a belting room and squeaky floorboards - this is heaven for a folk club. Unfortunately several resident changes have had to be made over the last few years but the stalwarts are now Back in Business, LocTupTogether, Mark Dowding (who replaced Rob Peacock when the pressures of promotion and residentship became unsustainable.) and Quartz. We have been here about 4 years, possibly more, and we don't want to move.
Mark
Dowding
Pete, Judith, Steve and Sandra
*************************************************** The Bothy Folk Club Meets at The Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport
Sunday 8-00pm
Organiser Clive Pownceby has sent us in this potted history of the club
All
Those Years Ago Now
stop me if you’ve heard this before but once upon a time, there
were……………….. well, just a smattering of Folk Clubs locally and says
Stan Ambrose “all these were run by groups.
As floor singers, we got our couple of songs and I had the idea, let’s run a
Folk Club with individual singers. Down in the (Liverpool) Cavern, the Spinners
were down there. Tony (Wilson) wasn’t there – he didn’t like the Spinners;
myself, Dave (Boardman) and Chris (Jones) were there. Tony was another solo
singer who seemed to be very active, so we asked if he’d like to come and join
us. We
established it on a formal basis. I was Chairman, Dave was Treasurer and he
brought his brother Godfrey in, Chris was Secretary and Tony organised the
Guests.” The
first Bothy opened at the ‘Cattlemarket’ in South Liverpool on 23rd
November 1964 a Monday, the local press at the time describing its location as
“near Stanley Abattoir” and referring to the “the resident guests – a
strange title, and these will be Hilary and Joan.”
Melody Maker outlined that the four founders “as well as forming a
loose group for certain songs, are basically solo artists trying to break away
from the group-dominated Mersey scene.”
Stan
continues “there were some pretty phoney
clubs around. We needed, we didn’t call them ground rules, more house rules. That’s how it
all started.” There may have
been a structured approach to the club (and those original 17 rules are still
adhered to!) but it was intended to keep the evenings informal, whilst still
maintaining continuity to create an atmosphere akin to a Scottish bothy. Some
weeks later at a Spinners concert at the Cambridge Hall (now the Arts Centre)
says Stan “people were coming up to them
(the Spinners) and asking them to run a Folk Club in Southport. They said well
we can’t do that, ‘cos they were going professional anyway and suggested
us.” In fact two full sheets detailing interested names for a Southport
Folk Club had been collected and if the Spinners had said Yes to their proposed
second club, events might well have taken a different turn but as it was, our
four heroes rose to the challenge.
A
daunting challenge perhaps? As Stan vouches “We
were told, oh we’ve had Jazz clubs, we’ve had this, we’ve had that. Nothing
lasts in Southport.” Starting
in April 1965, concurrently with the Liverpool Bothy for over a year, the
Southport branch ran initially at the Railway Hotel on Chapel Street demolished
as part of the municipal vandalism of the wonderful old station buildings in
1970/71. This vast Walkers pub boasted the longest bar in Lancashire. I remember
it as the sort of place where ageing bar staff wore white jackets and the
landlord saying, recalls Stan, “I don’t mind what you sing, as long
as you don’t sing religious songs.” Kevin Littlewood, there on the first
night remembers “when I walked in, there
were three blokes asleep in the bar” obviously
after an afternoon lock-in (pubs closed between 2PM and 7PM on Sundays back
then) “and I said is this the Folk Club?!”
He was duly directed upstairs. For various reasons – bigger room size,
beer quality perhaps, after a few weeks the Club moved to Birkdale’s Blundell
Arms and stayed there until the end of 2003 – a record duration maybe, in Folk
circles? I was member no. 776 when I first paid a visit on November 20th
1966, a Singers Night! The
Bothy Folk, as they had become despite their “wanting
to stay as individual singers but people would come up, wanting to book us”
(Stan again), found that running two clubs in addition to doing bookings locally
and further afield in addition to the day-jobs, was becoming too much of a
chore. It was decided to abandon one of the outlets and it had to be Liverpool.
(last guest – Robin Dransfield July 13th 1966) This was for the
simple reason that the city by then had a plethora of other clubs – Southport
had the one. Incidentally
the group played at the 2nd Cambridge Folk Festival that year on a
bill that also featured Carthy & Swarbrick, Hedy West and Louis Killen.
(Weekend ticket £1!) Stan says modestly, “well
it was a question of knowing people. I’d lived in
Cherry Hinton and used to be a local Councillor. (Ken Woollard) said do you know
any groups? I said, yes, I’m in one! Changes
in any organisation are inevitable. Christine (Mrs Hughie Jones – Spinners)
left to start a family and in 1968 Dave Boardman took up a teaching post in
Jamaica. Stan’s work with Folk Scene – still running successfully on BBC
Radio Merseyside, was taking up more of his time though he and Tony were
individual residents right up until, the mid-‘70s. Exeunt Bothyfolk! That
gentle reader, is how it all began. As Stan recounts “it
just seemed to happen” and now with both Tony and Dave sadly deceased, “I
feel like the Godfather. Like all groups we had our problems
– but they were always resolved. Tony always wanted to wear that hat on
stage!” There
have been many comings and goings over our 42 years to date but always with
Godfrey Boardman on the door throughout, and maybe not with as many upheavals as
some clubs undergo. I became a resident singer in 1974 and took over as
Organiser, on a 6 month trial basis from Tony in 1975 when he went off on a
teaching secondment in Hull. He never wanted his old job back and when I’d
chide him about this in later years, he would say, to my eternal pride “the
Club’s in safe hands.” I
can only say that thanks to him and his fellow founders, we all inherited a
going concern that they’d made second to none. We’ve
only recently released a Club CD though as individuals, the Residents are no
strangers to the studio and in the early ‘70s recordings were made for a vinyl
album, funded from raffle profits. I wonder what became of that master tape?
There were also plans for a ‘Bothy Book’ too, which was never published. Now
maybe there’s an idea for our 50th birthday? – and for the 60th,
we’ll………………… It
really is too late to stop now! Clive
Pownceby (interview
with Stan Ambrose conducted by Clive Pownceby and Kevin Littlewood March 2007)
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