The Youth Club

(Disclaimer: Joking aside, I fully understand the risks/dangers involved in these adventures and do so in the full knowledge of what could happen. I don't encourage or condone and I accept no responsibility for anyone else following in my footsteps. Under UK law, trespass without force is a civil offence. I never break into a place, I never photograph a place that is currently occupied, I never take any items and I never cause any damage, as such no criminal offences have been committed in the making of this blog. I will not disclose location.  I leave the building as I find it and only enter to take photographs for my own pleasure and to document the building. 

When I first set foot in this place, I was hit by the stench of pigeon excrement, and the smell of a fire from over a decade ago that still clung to the walls. The place was falling apart and seemed to be completely wrecked. I thought this was going to be an unrewarding visit. How wrong I was. This place turned out to be great! 

 

And credit where credit's due, I have Alice and her partner to thank for it. I was up in Alices area anyway so did the polite thing and started pestering her to meet up. Alas, she was busy exploring an abandoned power plant far, far away. But her partner knew of this place, only five minutes away from where I was, and tipped me off. Naturally I decided to swing by and check it out.

 

The club moved to these premises in December 1921, but it had already existed elsewhere for a couple of decades. The move was caused by the first world war, a war that the club newsletter said would go down in history as The Great War, oblivious to the upcoming sequel. During the first world war, the military had repurposed the clubs building for copper manufacturing, and by the time they were done with it in 1918, it just wasn't fit for purpose anymore. In addition, 203 of the clubs members, past and present, were not coming back.  

 

Some said that the club would never be the same again, and that's understandable. The memorial newsletter was particularly jarring, taking twenty-three pages to list the names and show the faces of those fallen, many of which were just baby-faced teenagers. It's surreal to see the mug shots of dead kids, who should have been out living life instead of getting blasted to bits on a battleground miles away from their homes. 

Nevertheless, the newsletter encouraged members to let their grief fuel their determination to maintain the prestige of the club. Its founder, Walter Southern, wanted to make sure a new generation revitalised what he'd started. Perhaps moving to this new building was symbolic of a fresh start.

 

While the club is said to have started in 1888, utilising an old mill as a meeting spot, its origins date back to 1868 when Walter Southern was just 23, and a teacher at a ragged school. In the Victorian era, Ragged Schools were basically charitable organisations dedicated to the free education of lower class children from poor families. They utilised stables and lofts, and were ran almost entirely by volunteers. They had a massive emphasis on reading and writing, and also bible studies. Straight away, this paints Walter as a pretty cool guy. He just wanted to give the kids from poorer communities an education, so that they might actually go on to achieve something. But he took it a step further when he decided to start a boys club, meeting once a week for recreation.

 

In Walters own words, his goal was "to direct these lads energies into channels more elevating than congregating in gangs at street corners." A club newsletter phrased it a little differently- "Our message is one of peace, and our aim to equip our members with the power to become better citizens, better chums and better men."

 

Walter sounds like a great bloke, and this entire purpose is something that resonates with me, having had a broken childhood and lacking a positive role model, and consequentially wasting a chunk of my life being angry and taking it out on whoever was handy, before eventually getting my shit together. Nobody wants to be an abhorrent person, but we grow into decent people when we recieve care and support from those around us. Our society holds it against people who don't have these things, but at the same time fails at every opportunity to provide it.

Walter Southern proved that with the right support, the children from the more destitute areas of the city could focus their energies into something positive.

 

 

Here's a room with a real relic smashed up in the corner. This televisions push-button channel selection features BBC1 and BBC2 but not ITV. That's amazing! It's crazy to think that television once only had two channels. It's a shame the TV is smashed, because it's practically an antique!

 

The first club meeting was held on the 3rd October 1868, initially only allowing boys from the ragged school to join, but soon expanding beyond that. It ran many sports teams, including football, rugby, cricket, basketball, gymnastics, snooker, and it also taught classes in book and clog repair, painting, and singing. It was said to have been a bit of a work in progress at the start, with some activities proving more successful than others, and taking a few years to establish consistent membership. Because a lot of the boys attending came from poor families, it also provided a communual washing area so that the boys could achieve some form of cleanliness. 

Additionally some genius had the idea of getting a boxing ring. As well as simply boxing for sport, the boxing ring was also used to teach self defence to the victims of bullying, and settle disputes when the boys fell out, which I think is great. Rather than getting into messy scraps, they could blow off steam in a controlled environment. Genius. I wish my workplace had a boxing ring.

 

By 1889 the club had 156 members, and many described it as a second home, giving direction to those who maybe would have otherwise gone down much darker paths. And it was a massive success in a number of sporting activities, winning an inter-club gymnastics competition and a football tournament in 1904. The club also had a yearly camping trips, the first being to Berkshire in 1892, Derbyshire from 1893 to 1899, Prestatyn from 1900 to 1908, before finally settling on Deganwy, where they went camping every year right up until the 1990s. This was a yearly tradition, and it provided a rare opportunity for the kids of these poorer communities to leave their urban setting and see the countryside.

One of my favourite portions of this building was the canteen. Interestingly, despite being around the middle of the building, it was only made into a canteen in 1968. I have no idea what this room was used for before that. Nevertheless I think it's pretty cool.

A mural on the cafe wall proudly displays the clubs motto. 

"What's brave, what's noble, let's do it."

I'm gonna be honest though, I don't like it. I mean it has a good message to it, but it seems a little... clunky? I dunno. I feel like there's probably a smoother, catchier way to convey that message. Perhaps slogans weren't Walters strong point, but morals were, and that's what matters.

 

As well as this motto, the club also had a sub-motto that changed every year, although I've only been able to find out what they were from 1914 to 1919 from the wartime newsletters. From 1914 to 1919 they were "Do your duty," "Fight the Good Fight," "Be of good courage," "Act well thy part," "He who conquers endures," and "Work for some good." 

I mean, they're all just different ways of saying "Be Good," apart from 1918 which talks of conquest, presumably over ones enemies in a wartime context, but it could be interpreted as conquering ones demons too. 

 

Nevertheless, my opinion aside, it's a positive message.

After World War One, Walter Southerns health was failing. And he was probably mourning the loss of the 203 people who had died in the war too. Nobody seems to mention this, but all of them had either been present members, or had been men that Walter had seen grow into functional adults from troubled children. It must have hit him hard. 

The first world war was a massacre, and as is always the case in situations like this, peoples lives get reduced to decimals and integers, and statements like "203 people died" lose their impact, especially from a vantage point a century into the future. But Walter knew every single one of them and had watched them grow. It's no wonder that he sought a fresh start in a fresh building, and I do wonder if he'd have retained the prior location even if the military copper industry hadn't made it unuseable. 

Whether related or not, I don't know, because Walter was pretty old at this point, but it was around this time that the club started being run by a chap called Arthur Gregson instead. 

There are still old gymnastics equipment in these hallways.

Here's a lone boxing glove. I wonder how many people have been whacked by this over the years.

Following the first world war, the club did bounce back. This place became a hive of activity, with Arthur determined to make it great. They got a cinema in 1928, and the club won cricket competitions in 1933, 1935, and 1936. By 1938 it had 650 members, which is pretty huge.

 

One notable success story from around this time was Stan Pearson, a club member who went on to play for Manchester United in 1937. He ended up representing England and also fighting in World War 2. 

Alas, World War 2 would bring about even more loss of life. In addition to that. the club itself closed temporarily as the building was repurposed by the military, this time as a rehabilitation centre for injured servicemen.

 

Here's the basketball court, slowly collapsing on itself. It's eerie enough thinking that this was once a place where people played, but now to think of it once being full of injured soldiers too, it has a new level of eerie. These walls could tell so many stories.

After the war, society was changing in a way that was detrimental to a lot of these old youth clubs, what with the school providing many of the activities that the club provided, and with the school hours changing. However this club seemed to do alright. They won five consecutive amateur cups in sports events from 1954 to 1958, and load of new high rise housing in 1962 boosted the membership. In 1978 they also procured the funds for an outdoor floodlit sports ground. It seemed to just go from strength to strength.

My favourite part of this building was the snooker hall.

The snooker table is still here, and it still has balls on it, which is just mindblowing given the level of vandalism and decay around here.

The green walls are kinda cool too, although I know that'll be an unpopular opinion. This area is pretty spacious so probably had a few more game tables too.

Onto the main hall...

This part of the building is similarly trashed, the roof slowly collapsing and the stench of pigeon shit particularly noxious. There's a stage at the far side though, indicating that once this would have been where all the performances took place, and probably the cinema screenings too.

On the blackened wall behind the stage, a mural of the clubs motto can still be seen. I know I took the piss out of it before, but I appreciate it as a positive message, and I respect what the club stood for, so it's kinda sad to see it like this. I also really like these old vintage murals on brickwork. They have a certain quality to them, like the old shop fronts where the business is painted onto the side of old buildings and can be seen faded long after the business has long gone. I just think it looks cool.

There's another mural over the door that says "Love." Not sure why. They probably just decorated the walls with their moral values.

Theres this room, with some minor fire damage. There seems to be a display cabinet in the corner that probably once housed all of the club sports trophies. 

In regards to the fire, while the article reporting on it is dated 2010, one of the locals claimed that the incident happened in 2007, and that was on an archived post I found from 2008. So the article dated 2010 must have been listing the date of an update to the page or something. Either that or there have been two fires.

The club had closed shortly before the fire due to dwindling numbers and unsustainable funding, and it had become a bit of a focal point for antisocial behaviour. Kids were frequently seen loitering on the roof, and one Christmas day some of the former staff members had to come and clean up after the windows had been smashed. So while the fire was tragic, it wasn't really surprising. Regardless, it all sounds woefully unfortunate given how much this club had provided for the community over the course of a century, but whats worse is that the clubs war memorial, including photos of members who had fought in both world wars, were lost in the fire.

There was further sadness among the former club members in 2011, when one of the former staff members, nicknamed "Lofty," passed away. Nobody seems to have a bad word to say about him. In fact quite the opposute. They refer to him as an icon. He was completely dedicated to being a positive role model, promoting team work and respect for others, and quite a few people say that they owe a lot of their confidence and success to him.

This room has some skittles in it.

And now it's time for the best part of any abandoned building, the toilets.

Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.

Upstairs there was a tiny room for watching the activities in the basket ball court.

And the squash courts too, although I don't really have a wide enough lens for them.

While I have no doubt that the main hall with the stage had been subjected to a fire, the toilets and  hall at the far end of the building seem to have been subjected to an even bigger one.

It is really sad. 

But that's all I've got on this amazing place. As I've said, having come from a shitty background with no role model, I can appreciate the importance of places like this. There are thousands of people who benefited from this club, whose lives could have been much different had it not existed. And in all their apathetic glory, developers have already got their eye on it, hoping to rip it down for about 32 apartments. But these were announced in 2019 and from what I can gather, nothing has happened yet.

However the spirit of the club lives on, interestingly, in the music industry. A musician who came here as a child has named an EP after it, saying in his own words that this was where he learned respect, discipline, application and how to become a representation of something more than just himself.

I'll be honest, I tried to give it a listen, and it's just not my genre. That doesn't make it bad though! There is no good or bad art, because opinions are subjective. But it didn't appeal to me. However it definitely seems to come from a good place of paying tribute to something that was instrumental in the artists personal growth, and I can appreciate that.

Anyway, that's all I got. This place was awesome even if it does make me sad, and as far as urbex difficulty goes, it's definitely good for beginners, but it's also pretty hazardous, so it's probably best not to go alone.

Next time, I'll be blogging about a court house, and then I'll be back on my local blog to talk about some freakin' mines! I've never done mines before so I'm totally excited for that one. In the meantime, follow me on Instagram, follow me on Reddit, follow me on Vero and the lesser social media sites, Twitter and Facebook. If you're lucky, and the algorithms aren't shite, you might see what I post.

Thanks for reading.