The Club and Institute, Opened 1960

Ponteland only got its first club in 1960.

The Working Mens’ Club movement started in this part of Northumberland just as the nineteenth century was coming to a close and really got going in the years preceding the outbreak of the First World War, with another wave of club openings after that war when the men returning from the conflict founding Ex-service men clubs (known as Ex’s) and Comrades clubs. Ponteland at that time was still a rural community so did not participate in this.

After the Second World War, the nature of Ponteland began to change. There were private housing developments taking place but also Castle Ward Rural District Council was investing heavily in building new council estates, changing the social profile of the inhabitants of the village. The new men (and it was still exclusively men at this stage) who were moving into the village with their families, were used to socialising in Working Mens’ Clubs and pressure grew to found one here. The Ponteland Club and Institute was incorporated in 1958 and soon had 500 members but no club premises.

The first club secretary was Thomas Clarke who had moved into Beechwood Place on the large Thornhill Road council estate. He approached the Northern Clubs’ Federation Brewery Ltd. -the co-operative brewery which supplied the beer and offered financing for clubs expansion. Together they planned a new club for this site which was undergoing regeneration with the building of a new shopping centre just next door.

The first building phase was finished by 1960 was a bar, games room, two lounges, a committee room and a secretary’s office. The second phase included the concert hall and the steward’s house which looks onto the Main Street.

Although Working Men’s Clubs have dramatically fallen from the popularity they enjoyed in the 1960’s and 1970’s, there are still some in the more prosperous areas of the North East, such as in Ponteland, which remain very active.