Bolton's top clubs of yesteryear - from The Palais to Atlantis

Many of the town’s most famous haunts – where scores of Bolton News readers most likely met future partners – have now closed for good.

The announcement that Nelson Square nightclub J2 is to close for a £700,000 refurbishment – opening in September as Level – prompted Tui Benjamin to take a look through the archives.

BOLTON’s first club was the Astoria Palais de Danse, which opened in 1928.

Better known to generations of Boltonians as The Palais, the non-licensed dance hall at the corner of Bridge Street and St George's Road was created by local builder Thomas Bolton.

A member of Bank Street Unitarian Chapel, he was a staunch teetotaller and wanted to create a venue which parents could safely let their daughters attend.

The Palais remained open during the Second World War – attracting young servicemen from a wide area including Americans from the Burtonwood base who arrived by truck.

In the 1940s, the Bolton Palais de Danse company bought the nearby Greenhalgh’s Bakery shop to supply the dance hall with bakery products.

Most of the local mills had their dances at The Palais, with well-known names like Tootals Barlow and Jones and Musgrave’s spinning mills organising special invitation-only occasions.

These were eventually stopped in 1968, however, because the functions upset regulars.

Over the years the nightclub swapped dances for disco lights – becoming Cinderellas Rockerfellas, then Ritzy’s, then Central Park.

The club was eventually renamed Ikon, with the elegant original tiled facade hidden by red cladding, and basement club Jumping Jak's renamed Jaxx.

But Ikon (below) closed for good on January 21, 2012 after trade fell by more than £1 million.

The building went up for sale for £500,000, and in August 2013 the Bolton News reported a 300-cover buffet restaurant was expected to open there in October of the same year.

But the derelict building was the subject of a suspected arson attack in September last year, and in November went on the market again for £450,000.

It still stands empty – a testament to the social scene of days gone by.

In the sixties, seventies and eighties, people would flock from miles around to enjoy the Bolton’s lively nightlife – envied even by Manchester city centre establishments.

Eddie Grindrod, the founder of The Beachcomber, was the man behind many of Bolton’s famous club names.

He set up the nautical themed bar – which did not have a licence, so sold coffee instead – in Bank Street in 1962 as a place for trendy young things to come and dance.

The following year Mr Grindrod and his business partners expanded into the cellars of the old Associated Dairies building next door, opening The Dungeons.

The venues were popular throughout the 1960s, with Herman’s Hermits, Spencer Davis, Van Morrison, The Who and Lulu all performing here.

When the club changed its name to The Cromwellian it hosted concerts by Rod Stewart and Elton John before they were famous. It later became the Playmate Club, and then Maxwell’s Plum (below).

Eddie later opened The Empress in Mealhouse Lane and Hawthorns Piano Bar in Spa Road – which in the 1980s was one of the most popular nightspots in the area.

The Top Storey Club, on the upper two floors of a warehouse in Crown Street overlooking the River Croal, was another popular haunt of the swinging sixties.

But on May 1, 1961, 19 people died in one of the worst peacetime fire tragedies ever to hit the borough.

The cause of the blaze was never discovered, and today a multi-storey car park stands in the former nightclub’s place.

But the deaths prompted a national outcry and Top Storey Club’s real legacy was in bringing about fundamental changes in the laws governing safety in clubs and licensed premises.

Another popular club was The Temple in St George Street – subsequently known as Eden – which was famed for having a swimming pool on its first floor.

But the nightclub burned down in a mysterious blaze in October 2001, with hundreds of clubbers forced to flee after a fire broke out in the roof space of the 3,000-capacity venue.

In 2004, owner John Musso told the Bolton News he hoped to reopen The Temple, but the same year plans to demolish part of the building and build 53 apartments were approved.

Atlantis – at the time Bolton’s largest nightclub, with capacity for 2,500 clubbers – opened in January 1998 in the Valley Centertainment complex in Waters Meeting Road as a “superclub for the Millennium”.

But the £5 million venue, which was one of the region’s most expensive nightclubs and attracted chart toppers including Girls Aloud and Busted, hit financial difficulties and closed down in March 2004, following a shooting incident in 2000. 

There were initially plans for the Bolton Pentecostal Church to buy the purpose-built building as a new base for worshippers, but in October 2004 plans to demolish the building and replace it with 92 flats were given the go-ahead.

Farnworth clubbers will remember popular venue Blighty’s nightclub, in Church Street, which later became Foo Foo Lammar in homage to the famous Manchester drag queen.

Plans to turn the plot of land, once occupied by a congregational church, into an 80-bed nursing home were approved in November 2002.

In October last year the Churchgate premises formerly occupied by the well-known Kiss nightclub, later the Brasshouse, reopened as The Venue – a live music bar for over 25s.

Bolton clubbers will also have fond memories of Tasker’s in Farnworth, Bees Knees in Crompton Way, Pink Panther, which closed down in the mid-nineties, Scamps, which became Space City, and Chicago Rock in Bridge Street.

Not to mention Monterey's, 5th Avenue, Vava, Dance Factory, Empress, The Neptune Club, Sundowners, Aquarius (below), Nocturne, Bus Inn and Bergeracs – to name but a few.

But despite the closure of many of Bolton’s best-known nightspots, the man in charge of the revamp of J2 – soon to be Level – insists the clubbing scene in Bolton isn’t over yet.

“A lot of the provincial satellite towns have suffered at the hands of more people going into Manchester, so we want to claw back some of that crowd.

“We just want to create something which will get more people back in Bolton,” events company director Sam Zegrour said.

That remains to be seen, but one thing’s for certain – as long as Bolton exists, there’ll be the appetite for drinking and dancing in the town on a Saturday night.

Send us your photographs and memories from clubbing days gone by in Bolton, e mail tui.benjamin@nqnw.co.uk