4:08pm Monday 22nd February 2010
IT’S a cry that used to echo through Worcester’s working households for generations: “C’mon, let’s go down to Heenan’s.”
Of course it could also have been: “Let’s go down the Meco”... or Wards or Archdales or any of the other social clubs attached to the city’s major factories when engineering was king.
They were popular places, usually packed, where people met for sociable evenings over a pint and a pub game or sometimes bingo or a band or a comedian.
The city’s commercial landscape has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. Much of its heavy industry has either gone completely or been fragmented into smaller pieces. The factory floor/typing pool/canteen culture of the Fifties and Sixties has been changed by new technology and a greater choice of TV channels; folk no longer gather together after work like they used to.
Even so, it was sad to hear the other day that one of Worcester’s largest, most successful and most enduring social clubs has called it a day. Heenan & Froude Social Club in Sansome Place had not had anything to do with the old engineering giant that spawned it for more than 25 years, but bounced along as a members-run enterprise happily enough until it finally ran out of energy as 2010 struggled through the snow. Its last hurrah came on New Year’s Eve when more than 100 people gathered to sing Old Lang Syne.
Within three weeks a decision had been made to close. Fourteen stalwarts were there on the final night and at the end of the evening the doors were shut and the lights turned off for good.
What happens to the building now is anyone’s guess, but “going down to Heenan’s” is certainly an option no longer.
For some regulars a light will indeed have gone out in their lives. None more so than for Dolly Holton, who is now 72 and was first taken along to the club by her parents when she was all of two weeks old. Later, Dolly and her husband Trevor were club stewards for 18 years, from 1960-78.
She said: “I lived and breathed Heenan’s. It’s so sad to see what’s happened to it now.”
In fact, her family had a connection with the building long before it was converted into a social club in 1936. Previously it had been St Martin’s Girls School, where her mother Doris Lloyd, who lived in Lower Chestnut Street, was a pupil.
Both Dolly’s grandfather Bert Hughes and father George Lloyd worked at Heenan & Froude, Bert in the paintshop and George in the engineering workshops. It must have caused some strained loyalties when Dolly married Trevor Holton, because Trevor worked for rival firm Archdales.
It’s possibly forgotten by today’s generation, but Heenan’s (the colloquial version of Heenan & Froude) was a major player on the international engineering scene for almost a century. One of its founders, William Froude, who was born in Devon, has been described as “one of the great Victorians” and in 1877 invented the hydraulic dynamometer – an instrument for measuring power or force – which was to become world renowned.
Among its many triumphs was the building of the 518ft Blackpool Tower in 1894.
So it was only natural that Heenan’s, with its roots in Victorian England, should adopt, albeit rather belatedly, one of the era’s social inventions, the social club.
These had grown out of the working men’s clubs, which began in Victorian times as places where working class men could meet and take part in recreational pursuits.
Apparently, many middle class social reformers founded such clubs during the temperance movement as a place to relax without alcohol but of course in time this changed.
They became a combination of public houses, music halls and clubs, where members could be entertained, drink socially or play bar games.
Certainly Heenan’s had its full quota of the last named with skittles, snooker, dominos, coits and darts particularly popular.
Because of its central position in Worcester, it also attracted a regular clientele who had only a tenuous connection with the engineering industry.
Dolly said: “The main Post Office sorting office was next door, so we always had lots of postal workers in. We also used to get plenty of policemen, too. I remember the one night we had more than 30.”
In the days when Worcester City had its own constabulary – pre-1967 – that probably accounted for about a quarter of the force.
The club, which held more than 200, was open every night of the week, officially until 10.30pm. Although, after that, with the doors locked, a bit of “social drinking” until the early hours was not unknown. Local sporting celebrities used to make an appearance as, on occasions, did some of the cast of Crossroads, that very regional television soap.
Dolly said: “We had some lovely times down there.”
But changing times hit Heenan’s hard.
She added: “We lost a lot of trade when the sorting office closed and the Post Office moved. Then the supermarkets started selling cheap beer, so people could drink at home, and when they brought the smoking ban in two years ago that just about did it. People didn’t like having to stand outside to have a cigarette.”
On the night Heenan’s Club closed, Dolly admits to having shed a few tears. She said: “It was very sad, after all the years I’ve spent down there.”
So another Worcester institution has quietly slipped away and they won’t be going down to Heenan’s any more.
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