Wrestling Heritage

There may be some who do not know that Salford is a City. When Greater Manchester was formed it was actually to make it a county. Outlying places were swallowed up like Rochdale, Bury, Oldham, Bolton, Wigan, Stockport, then there was Salford and Inner Manchester itself and the newly created confusion of Tameside and Trafford.

Manchester even took some of Cheshire into Trafford and if the region is ever to become a Northern Powerhouse one would wonder if eventually it might spread as far as Macclesfield, Knutsford, Warrington and even Wilmslow, which is right next to Manchester Airport.

Today Salford Quays is a tourist hot spot along with the Trafford Centre. How Manchester are trying to capture all this and just maybe they will. Only my opinion.

My father came from Salford and as a child my paternal grandmother lived there and both my father’s sisters all in the same street. Consequently I got to hear lots of old stories and believe me a Salfordian was just that bit more distinct to a Mancunian. The division for the most part was the River Irwell with a good handful of bridges between Manchester and Salford.  Leaving Manchester and heading for Liverpool, Preston or Wigan, you would travel west through Salford. Today Salford has spread as far as Eccles, Irlam and Cadishead in one direction down the A57  and Swinton, Walkden, Worsley and Little Hulton down the A6. Pendleton and Broughton were always part of the original Salford.

Searching the Golden Sixties I found quite a diverse selection of wrestling shows, some Joint Promotions, some Independent and some put on in conjunction with cabaret. This is social history. By 1963 the Beatles had arrived with the pop music boom and at the same time wrestlers like McManus and Pallo had become household names.​

As usual I present you with a gallery to really capture the past. I am going to cheat just a little and include the Glazebrook Country Club which just lies in Warrington, but is just the other side of a stream on the Cadishead Boundary with an Irlam telephone number. Look out for three bills in 1967/68. Lorita Loren v Mitzi Muller was on and another show starred Bertie Topham, a man who I don’t think ever worked for Joints. A third bill had Pete Roberts on and Roy StClair. Maybe they could tell us more.

The club was originally a wartime camp for Canadian and American servicemen and became a country club and restaurant in the 1960’s. The  owners staged gambling and strip club activities which lead to complaints and came back as a Squash and Badminton club. I believe today it is derelict.

In the 1970’s I went to some Jack Cassidy shows at the Lancastrian Hall in Swinton. Back in the sixties I found no shows here although I did find a  show or two at the Swinton Plaza Sporting Club (left). By the 1970’s I think this club had become the Wishing Well Club. Today it is Swinton Palais Dance Centre.

I also found a little gem at the old Rainbow Skating Rink in Eccles (above), I had been talking to a friend who told me the only wrestling he ever went to see was there, and the bouts generated so much heat the night that  he went,  the whole thing finished up with the crowd rioting.

A rare Unique Promotions Bill, the promoter being Grant Foderingham. The place is still there and I took the picture myself. I had not realized that it was once a skating rink. One thing is for sure, I drank a lot of Beer in that area, Packet House, Spinners Arms and Wangies.

What never ceases to amaze me are the many names I keep finding for Ezra Francis. The bill features Ezra Okorododo, could that be his original name ?

The promoter himself on the bill….The Black Panther.

It can be a frustration to find just a single bill and then no more, but one bill can mean everything. There is a 1969 bill for the Scala Cinema in Pendleton. The 1200 seater closed in 1968, was originally the Essoldo.

Back in the mid 1960’s I found wrestling at Worsley Civic Hall and this very much I believe to be Wryton Promotions. These bills were mainly filled with local men of amazing quality. Billy Robinson for one. But the bill below shows a super star visitor in Peter Maiva.

And here’s the thing now, if you read Bolton Grappling you will perhaps remember that the Wryton Stadium was a converted cinema, the Palladium and had a rival, The Palace stadium, which was another conversion of a closed cinema. The Palace looks to have been a short lived venture but along the way I have seen this modus operandi time and again. One such example I found on Cross Lane in Salford. And I am sure this was a brief venture, but weekly for a while in 1960. This was the old Hippodrome and pulled down in 1962. I give you the Windsor Cinema. (PEN1065 is the telephone number)​

For me I cannot be sure who the promoters were at the Windsor, the clues lie in the appearances of  Danny Flynn and Fred Woolley, maybe that would be a good guess.

Most Salfordians would tell you about the famous Cross Lane Market that I went to so often as a kid. It would take an old one to remember the Windsor or Hippodrome Theatre. I can tell you though that Salford in Victorian times had it’s centre much closer to Manchester and it’s first famous market was The Flat Iron Market.

On  a family note, the grandad that I never knew had a shop and in the back made stage props for local theatres in the early 1920’s. Two of his sisters were heavily involved in theatre. Salford only had three venues and two, I believe, were on Cross Lane. This was local to where my people lived. Maybe my grandad’s stage props were used in that building. Who knows.

On the final leg of my journey I take you into Broughton. Bills from Broughton Assembly Rooms, I believe Jimmy Savile had a flat over the road, was resident DJ in the early sixties and in the pop boom Donovan, Wayne Fontana and Manfred Mann were starring there.

But if you want a bigger club then The Dev, that is to say the Devonshire Sports Club. The Moss family owned four or five of these clubs in the Manchester suburbs and I will touch on the others later in this series. The bill for 11th December 1963 is touted as the ring debut of the infamous Jimmy Saville.. If you have read Eddie Rose’s books then you will spot some names on the bill below that Eddie worked with.

Name on the bill  Don Lang is a performer who made it fairly big in the 1950’s. Don Lang and the Frantic Five appeared on TV and “The Witch Doctor” made the top ten.

I have read that the Moss family owned The Domino in Openshaw, The Princess Theatre in Chorlton, The Southern Sporting Club in Gorton, and the Northern in Harpurhey. If this is true then we have that family to thank for all the adverts that they put in the papers recapturing this unique wrestling late night scene. Graham Nash and the Hollies performed right in their early years at the Dev, Nash being a Salford Lad. I have seen a possible conflicting report that Bill Benny had this club for a while. As far as I know Bill Benny died in 1963, the year of the Hollies first hit.

So there you are, Ron’s ramble round Salford, I remember those cobblestone streets and my Nan who had a two up and two down. I never went upstairs in that house because the toilet was down the back yard. The house had no hot water. Everyone polished their Red Doorstep, there were no gardens.

We went back every Sunday in Dad’s Ford Consul 375, in the very same era as the bills that I have found.

Historyo