Flamingo Cabaret Club / Bolton Social Services Club / West Ward Conservative Club, 70-72 Clarence Street, Bolton

 

This small car park marks the site of 70-72 Clarence Street and the Flamingo Club. In the distance can be seen St George's school which later became Ben Topps pub.

Autumn 1881 – West Ward Conservative Club is opened at 70-72 Clarence Street.

June 1920 – The club was put up for sale and was bought by St George's church but it was another year before the Conservative Club moved out.

July 1955 – Bolton Social Services Club opened at the premises.

April 1960 – Bolton Social Services Club wound up by Howcroft's Brewery (Bolton) Ltd after defaulting on a loan.

September 1960 – Gabriel Adedeji rents the building from Howcroft's and opens the Flamingo Club.

September 1961 – The Flamingo Club is raided by police following complaints from residents.

January 1962 – Club struck off.

Clarence Street once linked Vernon Street with Kay Street and from the 1840s onwards it was lined with houses built originally for Bolton's middle and upper classes. Many of the houses were swept away in the clearances of the sixties and seventies and for the construction of Topp Way which opened in 1982.

Two of the grand houses on Clarence Street, numbers 70 and 72, were combined to created the West Ward Conservative Club which opened in the autumn of 1881, but in 1920 the club was put up for sale. The building was sold to St George's church who used the premises as a church house. Despite the sale it took a year for West Ward Conservatives to move out. They then led a nomadic existence for much of the next two decades before operating another club at 50 Clarence Street from 1939 until 1958.

In 1955 St George's put 70-72 Clarence Street up for sale. It was bought by the Bolton Social Services Club, which was looking for new premises after its former base – the old National Fire Service Club on Crown Street - was compulsorily purchased for demolition. The Social Services Club had been formed in 1944 and it looked as though it might have to be dissolved, but the £2000 cost of purchasing the building was raised by a loan from local brewery Howcroft's and a further £600 was spent on decorations. There was a billiard room with two tables, a concert room that could seat 200 people, a committee room, a lounge, and six rooms of living accommodation for the steward and stewardess. There were also dart boards, a radiogram and a wireless.

The club opened in July 1955 and soon became known for its sporting events. It was active in local darts and snooker leagues and was included on the 1956 UK tour undertaken by Irish snooker champion Jack Rae. The club hosted a popular annual handicap snooker competition for local players, but despite the spacious living accommodation it had difficulty holding on to stewards. One couple left after a customer got into the living quarters while the club was open and stole a purse belonging to the stewardess. When challenged he claimed he was looking for the toilet.

In April 1960 the Social Services Club was the subject of a winding-up order from Howcroft's after defaulting on its loan and it was forced to close.

Howcroft's were now the owners of 70-72 Clarence Street but they needed to find a use for the building. Enter Gabriel Adedeji – also known as Gabriel Kayode – who in November 1958 had opened the Silvery Moon cafe at 72 Folds Road. He did a deal with Howcroft's to rent 70/72 Clarence Street for £4 a week.

Ad from October 1960

The Flamingo Cabaret Club opened on 29 September 1960 with music from the Fred Lang Trio. Bassist Fred Lang was joined by Derek Higman on piano and Fred Berry on drums. Vocalist and compere for the evening was Eddie Earl. Both acts were to make numerous appearances at the Flamingo.The Fred Lang Trio – later a quartet - was well-known in the area having made regular appearances at the Barbecue Club during that establishment's short-lived existence at 50 Clarence Street in the late-fifties.

The Flamingo put on a special New Year's party for members' children in January 1961 and rock and roll sessions on Friday nights began the following month.

But the club was soon in trouble with local residents. In August 1961 a letter and petition was handed in to the town's chief constable from 35 householders living in the Clarence Street area. The residents said they would refuse to pay their rents and rates if nothing was done about the noise and bad behaviour coming from the club's customers. They claimed that the previous weekend they had made four calls to the police about trouble. Fights were going on late on Saturday night and at midnight on Sunday. They claimed there were 17-year-old girls leaving the club with black people at 4.45 in the morning and shouting in the street. “We the residents wish to complain about our front doors being used as toilets, street fighting in the early hours, filthy language, people pounding on the club's doors at 11.30pm AND being admitted,” the residents wrote. They went on to complain about police being refused admission to the club despite waiting outside for 35 minutes. Other people who couldn't gain admission responded by throwing a brick through the window of a car parked on Palace Street. The letter ended: “So we will leave the matter in your hands for the moment and hope something is done.”

Something was done. The Flamingo was put under surveillance and on 23 September 1961 – less than two months after the residents' wrote to the chief constable – the club was raided. It was a Saturday night, the premises were crowded and drinks were being consumed, but it was 11.25pm and last orders should have been at 10.30. The police later said that the club was in a state of chaos. Broken glass was everywhere and they had to bring in 16 or 17 police officers to restore order. Almost 20 people aged between 23 and 41 years old appeared in court and were fined £3 each for drinking outside permitted hours, although over 60 people were in the club. Four more failed to appear but were also found guilty and fined. One man was found guilty for giving a false name and address and another was found guilty after pleading not guilty.

Gabriel Adedeji managed to get his case adjourned and it was early January 1962 before it was heard. He claimed that two plain-clothes policemen had offered to keep him out of trouble if he paid them £10 a week. He also said that they had accepted free beer from him. The police officers denied Adedeji's allegations and said that they had visited the club half a dozen times during September 1961 and had been served after hours each time. Adedeji's defence was that the club was a social centre for West African students and that political meetings and social gatherings “of a harmless nature” had been held there apart from the Saturday night riff-raff. He was fined £61 and the club was struck off the register. The premises later became a picture production business.

There was another Flamingo Club, this one on Egerton Street in Farnworth. It opened in September 1961 but was entirely unconnected with the Clarence Street business.