I had many late nights in Valentines on Barlow Moor Road. It was later to have other names, from Ra Ra’s, to Adam & Eve’s, the Charlie Brown’s Fun Pub and Valentine’s Health Club, although don’t ask me in what order.
I remember it as Valentine’s , not that I can truly say any of the nights there were memorable. It was a place you went after the pubs closed and back in the 1970s and ‘80s that meant half past ten in the week with a 30 minute extension on Fridays and Saturdays. So if you wanted to party on after closing time Valentine’s was the place.
To be honest they were not that enjoyable, no more than the equally drunken evenings in the long room above the Pottery shop on Wilbraham Road.
Looking back I might have preferred it when it was the Princess Club. Then according to the historian Cliff Hayes it attracted many of the top entertainers in the 1960s, including the Drifters, Bob Monkhouse, Billy J Kramer, Lonnie Donegan and Tom Jones.
It is hard to think that somewhere like Chorlton could have been a venue for such performers. But back then there were plenty of clubs across Manchester which offered doing the same. Just a little further south and a bus ride from Princess Road was the Golden Garter in Wythenshawe which was still pulling them in during the early 1980s.
Now I never went to the Princess Club and I am not sure when it had changed its name from the Chorlton Palais de Dance, but there will be some who do.
Live acts as well as live music was more in evidence, and it could also be found in those big pubs built I guess in the 1930s. There were plenty of these just outside Chorlton. I would occassionly fall into the Mersey Hotel on Princess Road. It was a big barn of a place, with lots of different rooms and may even have still had waiter service. But like our cinemas the days of these barns were numbered. Despite changing its name to the Mersey Lights it eventually went. But in its time according to Cliff Hayes it hosted appearances by Little and Large, Les Dawson, Bernard Manning and Freddie and the Dreamers.
Still there is now the Edge which may soon be all we have left of the big venues since the news that the Irish Centre may close.
Leaving me just to add that the rise of the bar culture has offered new and more intimate places for live entertainment.
Location; Chorlton and Manchester
Picture; The Mersey Hotel m 49963 1970 A Dawson, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council
I remember it as Valentine’s , not that I can truly say any of the nights there were memorable. It was a place you went after the pubs closed and back in the 1970s and ‘80s that meant half past ten in the week with a 30 minute extension on Fridays and Saturdays. So if you wanted to party on after closing time Valentine’s was the place.
To be honest they were not that enjoyable, no more than the equally drunken evenings in the long room above the Pottery shop on Wilbraham Road.
Looking back I might have preferred it when it was the Princess Club. Then according to the historian Cliff Hayes it attracted many of the top entertainers in the 1960s, including the Drifters, Bob Monkhouse, Billy J Kramer, Lonnie Donegan and Tom Jones.
It is hard to think that somewhere like Chorlton could have been a venue for such performers. But back then there were plenty of clubs across Manchester which offered doing the same. Just a little further south and a bus ride from Princess Road was the Golden Garter in Wythenshawe which was still pulling them in during the early 1980s.
Now I never went to the Princess Club and I am not sure when it had changed its name from the Chorlton Palais de Dance, but there will be some who do.
Live acts as well as live music was more in evidence, and it could also be found in those big pubs built I guess in the 1930s. There were plenty of these just outside Chorlton. I would occassionly fall into the Mersey Hotel on Princess Road. It was a big barn of a place, with lots of different rooms and may even have still had waiter service. But like our cinemas the days of these barns were numbered. Despite changing its name to the Mersey Lights it eventually went. But in its time according to Cliff Hayes it hosted appearances by Little and Large, Les Dawson, Bernard Manning and Freddie and the Dreamers.
Still there is now the Edge which may soon be all we have left of the big venues since the news that the Irish Centre may close.
Leaving me just to add that the rise of the bar culture has offered new and more intimate places for live entertainment.
Location; Chorlton and Manchester
Picture; The Mersey Hotel m 49963 1970 A Dawson, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council
The Mersey became The Snooty Fox for a while too.
ReplyDeleteI worked at Ra Ras until it closed in the late 80s early 90s. It was then demolished to become a McDonald's drive through. Gary
ReplyDelete