WORKING MEN’S CLUBS: Rescuing the working man?

We are told that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and for me that came true; except it wasn’t a book, it was a building. I grew up near Madeley in Telford Shropshire and right in the centre of the town is a working men’s club called the Anstice. As a child I had imagined it to be a place of snooker tables, onearm bandit machines and dart boards. Of course, as a child I knew all this without ever having set foot in the place! My grandad would laugh at my quiet consternation and tell me it was an historic building. ‘Yeah, that’s just for men,’ I would retort.

My grandad had been right; this was a building with history

Closure of the oldest Working Men’s Club in England

Forward some 20 years and the Anstice, the oldest Working Men’s Club