Salford Lads Club

Summary

A club for working lads of 1903, designed by Henry Lord and provided by the Salford brewers JG and WG Groves as a community building for the New Barracks estate, Salford Corporation’s first municipal housing development. It is in an eclectic Elizabethan style, built of red Ruabon brick and red terracotta, and its cupola is a local landmark. The building survives remarkably intact, most unusually still hosting its original club. It has a notable association with national sporting and music history, in particular with The Smiths, a band who achieved international fame.

Reasons for Designation

Salford Lads’ Club is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as the best surviving example of a purpose-built lads' club, a once common but now rare building type. Only a handful are thought to survive nationally;

* as one of the most ambitious designs for a lads’ club to be built, impressive in the good quality of its architecture, materials, details, planning and craftmanship;

* for the retention of much of its original internal plan as well as many good-quality fixtures such as staircases, fireplaces, original joinery and tiling, memorials and vestiges of early sporting provision.

Historic interest:

* as the oldest lads’ club in the country still in use by its original organisation, it represents an important and enduring investment in social provision for young people, which included recreation as well as instruction. This is eloquently expressed in the scale and quality of the exterior and the well-planned interior with dedicated spaces for sports, leisure and learning;

* it retains legible spaces and features that afford a strong connection with several sporting and musical figures of national significance, including the Manchester United footballer Eddie Colman, British boxing champions Jamie Moore and Marc Leach, and as the place most strongly associated with The Smiths, a band who achieved international fame and whose fans visit in their thousands each year.

Group value:

* for its strong material, visual and contextual relationship with the nearby church of St Ignatius (NHLE 1408474) as the principal community buildings commissioned for the heart of the New Barracks Estate, Salford Corporation's first municipal housing scheme, also designed by Henry Lord.

History

From the late 1850s the establishment of youth institutes and boys’ clubs aimed to provide opportunities for recreation, education and improvement to keep working boys aged between about 13 and 19 away from pubs and territorial gangs (which in Manchester were known as ‘scuttlers’.). The first purpose-built lads’ club in England was opened in 1872 in Kennington (London), and most major towns and cities eventually had at least one. The first boys’ club in Manchester was set up in 1878 in Rusholme and the first purpose-built club, for Hulme and Chorlton-on-Medlock, was opened in 1887. By 1907 there were 23 clubs in Manchester and Salford, many with purpose-built premises.

Henry Lord (1843-1926) won the competition for the New Barracks estate, Ordsall, in 1899, with a scheme for council housing, shops and pub. Parts of the site were sold by Salford Corporation for the provision of the Lads’ Club (which was built at the expense of brewers JG and WG Groves), the Church of St Ignatius (provided by Lord Egerton of Tatton) and a Girls’ Institute (destroyed by bombing in the Second World War).

Lord's proposal for the Club complemented the soft red brick and simplified gabled Tudor style of his housing and was balanced at the other end of the street by the church (National Heritage List for England – NHLE – entry 1408474), in similar materials. Lord was a prolific architect in Salford and had recently designed a number of schools and the Royal Technical College (now the Peel Building at Salford University, 1896, NHLE 1386177), and the Queen’s Jubilee Nurses’ Home (now the working-class movement library, 1897-1901, NHLE 1386174). He became a member of the committee at Salford Lads’ Club.

Salford Lads’ Club opened on 24 August 1903 with the motto ‘to brighten young lives and make good citizens’. A formal opening on 30 January 1904 was led by its first member, Robert Baden-Powell (later founder of the Scout movement). The building, designed for instruction along with sport and leisure activities, originally included several classrooms as well as three fives-courts next to the central gymnasium. The need for classrooms was gradually reduced by expansions in the scope of free education, and after the First World War a first-floor classroom was converted to a billiards room. One of the arches overlooking the gymnasium was filled in so this part of the corridor could be included in the new room. One of the fives courts was also knocked through to the adjacent room, to create a larger recreation space and in the 1960s another of the fives court was converted to a weights room, used by the Regent Physical Culture Club.

Since the late C20 various historic features, which had been moved or stored in the building, have been reinstated. This includes unblocking the billiards-room arch overlooking the gym, which is now glazed instead. Early in the C21 former member Fred Done paid for the renovation of the boxing suite based in two former classrooms on the first floor, and a lift was inserted behind the stage of the first-floor concert hall (using lottery funding).

Salford is the oldest lads’ club building still in use by its original organisation. It has unusually good records of its membership, whose names from many different countries express the diverse nature of Ordsall’s population as a result of its proximity to the Salford docks. Photographs of the club’s championship-winning football and netball teams of 1918-1919 include a black member, in a year when race rioting took place throughout Britain, including in Salford. The club’s records include members’ addresses, employment histories and the schools and churches they attended, and sporting activities including the club’s annual camps. Photographs are displayed of annual camps from 1904 to 2025 (with the exceptions of 1926, the year of the national strike, and 1940 to 1946).

The club has a proud sporting history. Several successful boxers trained here, including Billy and Ted Marchant who competed in the USA in the early C20 (and later brought Rocky Marciano to visit the club). The Lonsdale belts of recent British champions Jamie Moore and Marc Leach are displayed at the club. Probably the best-known sporting member was Eddie Colman of Manchester United, one of the ‘Busby Babes’ who also played for England. He played for the lads’ club while working as ground staff at Manchester United and remained a member after turning professional, before tragically being killed in the Munich Air Disaster of 1958, aged 21. Professional snooker player John Virgo also practised here as a member.

The band room and concert hall also fostered the early musical careers of members who later became stars, including Allan Clarke and Graham Nash, founder members of The Hollies. The success of The Smiths (1982 to 1987) has resulted in a close and enduring association with the club premises. Lead singer Morrissey was passionate about the work of Shelagh Delaney (both of whose grandfathers were club members), and the New Barracks estate featured in the film adaptation of her play ‘A Taste Of Honey’ in 1961. Artwork for ‘The Queen Is Dead’ album (1986) included a photo of the band outside the entrance to the club and it, and the estate, features again in a video for a track on ‘Strangeways Here We Come’ (1987), the band’s final album. This connection draws thousands of visitors annually from around the world. The former weights room has been adapted by artist Leslie Holmes as a focus for display of their passion, including large screens folding out from the wall to increase the available display space. Walls and ceiling are now covered with imagery and fan contributions, collected since 2003. The adjacent archive room has an artwork by Why Not Associates comprising a metal screen laser-cut with the names of over 22,500 names of all former members from 1903 to 2015. (it received a UK Design Award in 2015).

Details

MATERIALS: red Ruabon brick with red terracotta dressings and detailing, slated and lead roof coverings, timber windows, cast-iron rainwater goods.

PLAN: a central gymnasium aligned roughly north-south, with ranges along its west, north and east sides, and a north-west entrance and tower with domed cupola.

EXTERIOR: forming the northern end of a block of development in the New Barracks estate, between Coronation Street and St Ignatius’ church on King Edward Street.

Moulded sill and string bands unite the facades, and rainwater goods have polygonal hoppers.

The west façade to St Ignatius Walk is of five bays, with the three-storey tower at the left, a two-storey, three-gabled range, and a single-storey bay at the right. The single-storey bay has an added plain parapet and a three-light mullion and transom window. The gabled range has semi-circular arched windows to the ground floor, and mullion and transom windows to the first floor, all with mouldings. The central upper window is a bowed oriel with lead part-dome. The gables are flanked by moulded shafts.

The square tower to the left is set back and angled inward. Pilasters are surmounted by a giant order of twin pilasters to the upper stages, with rusticated bases and supporting small open pediments to the cornice, and a pierced parapet. The timber cupola is arcaded with ventilation louvres behind, and an ogee dome. The tower’s upper stage has a pedimented mullion and transom window, and the first floor a bowed oriel with supporting ground-floor pilaster, which separates arch-pedimented stair windows. Behind the tower is the Flemish gable of the Coronation Street range.

Set back to the left of the tower, the canted two-storey corner bay incorporates a triple-arched entrance, the semi-circular arches carried on squat banded columns with scrolled capitals, and set on square bases. Within the arches are later fanlights with radiating glazing bars, and panelled doors. Above the central arch a painted timber sign reads 'SALFORD LADS/ CLUB', with Lancashire roses.

The north facade to Coronation Street is approximately symmetrical, with a tall central five-bay range with arched openings below the mullion and transom windows of the first-floor concert hall, and a cornice and parapet. This range is flanked to the right by the entrance bay. To the left it is flanked by the north end of the Huddart Close range. This has a canted angle and flat-headed transomed windows with joggled lintels (on the first floor, these have small pediments).

The façade to Huddart Close has a later entrance in the right bay, below a Flemish gable with pilasters and truncated chimney, and flanked by similar windows to those on the north end. (Above and behind is the Flemish gable of the concert hall’s east end). To the left is a small arched first-floor landing window. A shaped parapet defines the extent of the former classroom range continuing to the left, with three mullion and transom windows over two arched windows and an original secondary entrance with a segmental flying lintel.

To the left are a further three gabled bays, one with similar windows to the ground and first floor, one with just a first-floor window, and one blind. The south façade is blind, with the gable of the gymnasium roof at its centre.

INTERIOR: the original plan survives with very little alteration, and many features remain throughout, including the main and secondary staircases, glazed timber doors, several fire surrounds and boarded or granolithic floors (some with witness marks and grates relating to the original heating system). Most walls have a glazed brown tile dado, with painted brick above.

The entrance retains the lodge with glazed hatch, and gives onto the stair hall, with stone stairs and landing, wrought-iron balustrade and mahogany handrail. The walls are hung with sporting trophies, and bronze plaques commemorating the fallen of both world wars. Another bronze plaque (erected in 1927, after James Groves died) celebrates the founders. Plaques on the landing also commemorate significant service to the club by others.

The full-height gymnasium is the centrepiece, with arch-braced queen post trusses and a ridge lantern (retaining the opening mechanisms, now with electric drive). The north end is galleried with a later extension part way along the east wall. The hall is arcaded along its sides, retaining the timber balustrades dividing it from the north and west corridors. The south-east arcade accessed the fives courts; one arch has historic brick and tile infill, one (now The Smiths room, formerly a weights room) a timber screen, and one (now the archive room) a modern glass screen. This last retains its timber balustrade-posts at the back and the wooden ‘tin’ across the front wall. The gym’s west wall also has a first-floor arcade, where a corridor accesses the secretary’s room and billiards room.

Other notable features include the club room with its projecting glazed timber hatch facing the gymnasium and an interior retaining cupboards, cabinets, racks for cues and member cards, and a spade-motif fire surround. The billiards room retains a fireplace and one table and a scoreboard. The first-floor concert hall retains its stage with arched proscenium, fixings in the floor for a temporary boxing ring, and rear (west) minstrels’ gallery. The gallery has wooden roller shutters to the band-room behind, which is accessed by a wooden stair with ramped skirting. The boxing suite retains a former classroom fireplace and display cabinets. The secretary’s office has similar cabinets to the club room below, and an Art Nouveau fire surround. The Smiths Room retains some historic features and display screens

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

490528

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Eagar, W McG, Making Men: The History of Boys' Clubs and Related Movements in Great Britain, (1953), 158-161, 279
Inglis, S, Played in Manchester: the architectural heritage of a city at play, (2004), 102-109
Hartwell, C, Hyde, M, Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East, (2004, reprinted 2010 with corrections), 636

Websites
Information on Henry Lord from Manchester Victorian Society, accessed 08/04/26 from https://www.manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/architects/henry-lord
Information on New Barracks estate from Manchester Victorian Society, accessed 08/04/26 from https://www.manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/buildings/model-shops-houses-etc-barracks-site-regent-road-salford

End of official list entry

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