Re: The Con club
 

To be honest Max it was riddled with dry rot in the early nineties and would have taken hundreds of thousands of pounds to get rid of that's why they sold the club couldn't afford the upkeep

Re: The Con club
 

Interesting article that Steve. I worked with the 70's version of the Manhattans a few times at various functions, Jack ( although he tened to be called John ) Graham and the 10ft tall Tony :D.

Presumably Glenn South is the same one who went on to become part of Vonny's Magic and eventually opened a club in Nelson called Vonny's and then I think it changed it's name to become the Midnight Club or something ( memory is going on that one lol ).

Re: The Con club
 

Just remembered it was the Goodnight Club :)

Re: The Con club
 

Dave, Manchesterbeat is well worth having a sneck at, as there are quite a few bands from your neck of the woods on it, like this lot, for instance:

59th Street Bridge on Manchesterbeat - the group and music scene of Manchester in the 60s

Re: The Con club
 

You introduced me to Mancesterbeat years ago Wyn.

Re: The Con club
 

Cracking site, Al, well worth taking a look at for Accywebbers who were out and about in the 60's.

Agree with you about St Louis Union. Their hit single, a cover of a Beatles' song didn't do 'em justice. Storming Soul/R&B band when they were playing live at places like Accy Con:

St Louis Union - respect - YouTube

Re: The Con club
 

I see that it was set on fire around 1400 yesterday - just when the Police would be very busy elsewhere in town - coincidence?

Re: The Con club
 

As Leroy Jethro Gibbs says, I don't believe in coincidences:D

Re: The Con club
 

Is it to late to save?. If it were in Launceston, the council would do something, they pride the city with all the heritage buildings, nothing more than four story's high. Accy demolished a hell of a lot in the 60s, will they never learn. Look what they did to Blackburn.

Re: The Con club
 

The trouble is Alan councils just don't have the kind of money needed to renovate these buildings

Re: The Con club
 

The problem here Alan is that heritage can go back for many hundreds of years so a buildng like the Con Club not much more than 100 years old if that is pretty low priority. In Oz the heritage doesn't go back more than 200 years (correct me if I'm wrong) so there are probably fewer buildings to think about preserving.

Just looked at the English Heritage listing for the Con Club and it says "interior of little interest" so they wouldn't worry about the ballroom at all.

Re: The Con club
 

I think the Con Club has a quite a special place in a lot of townsfolks hearts as many of them remember dancing there and going to "dos" of one kind or another. My parents met there and got together at a dance and I also went a few times for dances connected to school and then to work as a caterer sometimes.

It seems a shame to lose it to dereliction. Money for silly marble benches on Broadway and other white elephants around town can be found when necessary but when they just dont want to do something they hide behind the cries of "no money".

Re: The Con club
 

Correct me if I'm wrong but surely one of the stumbling blocks here is that the building is not a "public" building as such and doesn't belong to the council but is in private hands. That means there would be more hoops to jump through if the council did decide they wanted to save the building.

Don't know if it's still a fashionable idea in architectural circles but recently one trend has been facadism - saving the front of a building and constructing a new one behind it. If the Con Club really is in such a bad state then this might be an idea as the front is the memorable bit. It might be cheaper in the long run than trying to renovate what is there already. I don't know, I'm not an expert in these matters, but I wonder if the idea has been given any thought.

Re: The Con club
 

Perhaps one of our Accyweb "heritage" newhounds might have a photo of the state it's in after the fire.

Re: The Con club
 

Don't know why but the idea of saving just the facade has me thinking of American westerns where the towns look real and then are just fronts held there by wooden props!

Never heard of it Sue - bit like cutting off your nose to save your face. Replacing solid stone with breeze blocks behind the scenes doesn't grab me as an idea.