New Houghton Working Men’s Club, Notts
You can find New Houghton Working Men's Club in the small village of the same name, on the Rotherham Road. It is about three miles from the town centre of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. The club has occupied its present site since 1957. Before that it was situated just a few minutes up the road. There used to a cricket ground and a football pitch on the old site but the council wanted the land to build houses on. These facilities were given up in return for the new club site which has at least has a football pitch attached to it.
Darren Lack became a member of the management committee in October 2009, and wrote in to Club Historians. He wanted to get some advice about how to keep the club running but also to tell us about its history and importance to the local community.
He writes:
“The club is in decline like many others around us but we’re going to fight tooth and nail to keep our club open. It’s steeped in memories; from day trips to Skegness on the coaches, as many as 6 or 7, when I was growing up to pantomimes at Xmas. All that's gone now, because of the shortage of funds and so forth. We do more for kids than most places around us. We hold family nights and a kids disco on Thursday night. We encourage them to help us around the club with weeding and keeping it tidy. I’m in the process of trying to get a daily youth club run from our back room that no one uses. No-one seems to want to help. It’s heart breaking at the moment to see it going under but I know with the young committee we have just installed we can turn it round.”
“We’re in the process of doing bits of maintenance to the club as it’s been left to go down hill a little bit. A group of us are up there on Saturday jet-washing all the stone front.”
If you live in the area, why not go along and join the club and its many activities? You might not want to do any jet-washing but there will be other things you can do to help and joining the club will certainly help keep it open.
The full management committee (November 2009) are: Steve Lack, Billy Parkin, Alan Green, Shane Parkin, Chris Jones, Dean Quimby, Ross Green, Paddy Southwell and Jamie Farnsworth
