Category: Preston

Preston Venues 37 to 38

At the tail end of 2005 I read an article in the Friday entertainment section of the Lancashire Evening Post which provided detail of an interesting sounding gig in January 2006. The gig was to take place at Preston St Bede’s Club. I had never heard of the venue and located it on the map to the bottom of Brownley Road off Chorley Old Road in Clayton Le Woods, above five miles outside the centre of town.

I still had limited familiarity of the area so decided to undertake a field trip in the car beforehand to case out the joint and work out feasible travel plans and surrounding hostelries to visit beforehand. I found the building nearby to the Church and attached Presbytery of St Bede’s, the latter sites having been Grade II listed since 1984.

The 125 bus was decided upon as the most practicable commute option. So, on a particularly baltic Friday night I met Uncle George at the main bus station, and we boarded the bus that traversed its meandering way through Bamber Bridge, past Junction 29 off the M6 to our drop off point very near our first watering hole the Halfway House.  The bus continues past Chorley Hospital and eventually arrives at its end destination of Bolton a week on Tuesday!    

The 125 bus with Preston Bus Station in the background. Image Credit flickr.com

We visited a couple of other pubs, but I forget their names, I recall in one the jukebox had Husker Du ‘Don’t Want to Know if You Are Lonely’ on so that was obviously selected. In the other I encountered local comedian and Phoenix Nights star Dave Spikey in the lavatories!  

From there, there was an alley that cut you through to the venue. The concert area was a large, packed room in a social club setting where the audience was very respectful, so you had to tiptoe to the back of the room. George said it resembled folk clubs of old.

The support act was Corb Lund who is a country and western singer from Alberta in Canada. He has been on the scene for many years and a long-standing member of the Corb Lund band. On the night he played a solo set and was very engaging and enjoyable. 

The main act who had originally sparked my attention was Chuck Prophet. The Californian had first crossed my radar as a member of the 80’s desert rock band Green on Red. I used to play their records a lot, especially their debut album ‘Gas Food Lodging’.

I recall an interview at the time with Neil Young on the Old Grey Whistle Test where Andy Kershaw played some of the record to Neil, who listened for a few seconds and then drawled ‘sounds like Crazy Horse’! I got a chance to see them once supported by Steve Earle at Manchester International 1 in March 1987, but they produced a crushingly disappointing set.

Obviously, lessons were not learnt as unfortunately, this was little different as the gig was limp and his banter was surreal and unamusing. We left prior to the end of the set and arrived at the bus stop and prepared to wait more in hope than in anticipation, though the gods were smiling on us as a bus arrived within a couple of minutes to take us back into the city. The evening ended with a late drink in the Roper Hall club.

Nearer town on the same bus route on Preston Road, you would find the Preston Pines Hotel.  The venue was a famous local establishment and had been open for fifty years for cabarets, functions, school proms and weddings and I had personally attended a couple of weddings there myself and stayed overnight in the thirty-five-room hotel. It was owned throughout this period by the Duffin family before eventually closing in February 2017 and making space for 40 apartments and a Lidl supermarket.

Preston Pines Hotel. Image Credit pinkweddingdays.co.uk

They had a large function room where in 2006 Gill and I were roped in to attending a friend’s birthday party. The ‘entertainment’ on the evening was a local Abba tribute band called Mamma Mia.

Preston Venues 35 and 36

At the bottom end of Friargate you would find the Sun Hotel. On the opposite corner from the Sun, back in the day there was a bakery that used to sell the odd combination of a Cheese and Beetroot sandwich, which remarkably worked but I haven’t sampled that grouping for a while. Now, whilst I am thinking about it, where did I put those cocktail beetroots and Cathedral City…!

Next to the pub you can take a turning into Great Shaw St which runs into Market St West where you pass the Market St Social pub, which is linked to the Plau bar, beyond there is the Playhouse. I used to very occasionally show up there to watch theatre performances but remember it mainly for when it was the location of the Preston film club which I attended a few times, though thinking back the only film I can recall watching was Luc Besson’s Subway featuring Christopher Lambert and Jean Reno. They always rather quaintly used to play the national anthem prior to every performance.

Across the road, in the 80’s was a tiny highly disreputable club called the Cherrytree which I never actually visited, but its reputation preceded it!

Back around on Great Shaw St you would find a former nightclub which had various names over the years including Green, The Club Royale, The Millionaires Club. The club was built in 1920 as a casino but its most famous era was in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s following its name change to the Gatsby in 1970. I remarkably don’t recall ever visiting in that era. It was a recognised Northern Soul/Dance venue, but they apparently also had legendary student nights!

The Gatsby. Image Credit Flickr.

It had two bars and two dancerooms and was a live venue and bands such as Showaddywaddy, Mud and Bay City Rollers graced the stage there.

In the 2010’s it rebadged itself as Blitz, a specific live venue which is not to be confused with the current Blitz next to the bus station, which I know as The Venue which will be covered in a future blog – all still with me?!! 

I saw two gigs there, the first on 28/03/13 was Nine Black Alps, who I was watching for the fourth and most recent time. It was to a degree diminishing returns as they were not as sharp and effective as a band as they had been a decade earlier. The place was half full and they were supported by Youth Society. The venue was even less full later that year when I witnessed a rather tired set from old punks the Vibrators. The site was subsequently sold by UCLAN for student accommodation.

Back on Friargate, the Irish themed bar O’Neills opened its doors in 1996 and swiftly became a regular watering hole for Uncle George and I, quite often being the final pub of the night for a cheeky Guinness and Black. We were recognised to a degree so when they launched the Guinness Cold brand, we were asked to review a couple of free pints, and I can confirm unsurprisingly we readily agreed and the beer passed the test!

Preston O’Neills. Image Credit Trip Advisor

For a few years it also became the location for Christmas Eve gatherings and the pub in a later year also built a rooftop beer garden. The pub name changed over to Shenanigans in 2017 before being refurbished the following year into a more open plan establishment and reopened as the Northern Way.

In the 2010’s they started having live acoustic acts who played either by the front door or on the raised area at the back of the pub, I have quantified this as a single venue as the ‘stages’ were in effect in the same room.

I saw seven bands there between 2013 and 2017. They were namely The Two of Us, Balls Band, Danny Rose, Marcus and Jaidi, Kevin Harper, Eddy Bland, and Sheena Brown. The first named of those was of interest as this was Uncle George and mine’s 400th gig together!