Half a mile from the city, just past the Bullring Centre and across from the coach station the Digbeth City Hall hosted events to entertain the people of Birmingham for decades.
It’s still in existence today, having survived the HMV demise by it’s acquisition by a new company in December, 2012, just weeks before owners HMV went into administration.
Fairport Convention, The Pogues, the Sex Pistols and the Moody Blues appeared on posters alongside the names of Les Kellett, Mick McManus and Kendo Nagasaki. The hall, formerly known as Digbeth Institute, opened in 1908 as a church attached to the Carrs Lane Congregational Church. Birmingham City Council bought the hall for £65,000 in 1955 and turned it into the Civic Hall for letting.
The name “Digbeth Institute” was carved in stone above the doorway. It still is. If it hadn’t been for every other wrestling fan walking in the same direction the place would easily have been missed. It was the most unassuming public hall anywhere, just a couple of doors in the middle of a terrace. Even the address, 78 Digbeth High Street, underplays the significance of the building.
Strangely enough, though, if you stepped across the road and looked up at the large, grandiose windows set in the stone walls you could easily imagine this was a grand country house.
The country house theme was continued on entering the single set of double doors. It was like standing in the hallway of a very grand home, with a tiny window to buy the tickets! Stairs swept up to the balcony, which went around three sides of the hall. As the centre for the punk rock activity in Birmingham the place gained a reputation for the place where fans jumped from the balcony, sometimes with serious consequences.
Through the hallway and up the stairs into the arena. The wrestling ring seemed huge and dominated the entire hall, which was quite small. The balcony loomed above, and gave an appearance of crashing down on those below! Climbing the stairs again and sitting in the balcony the ring seemed very, very close.
The place always seemed to be packed. The atmosphere was terrific, likened to a bear pit by some fans. A family venue, where friends met up every Thursday night, Digbeth was a place of memories, such as Sid Cooper leaving the ring to eat the pie of an audience member returning from the bar, or an ice cream dropped from the balcony onto the wrestler below.
How we laughed. Well, except for one.
In the 1960s the promoter was Lew Phillips. A former boxing promoter Phillips called on the expertise of wrestler and promoter Jack Taylor to help him find his way in the wrestling world, and it was a successful combination. He put on some cracking shows, but as an opposition promoter most of the wrestlers had, of course, never been seen on tv. There was Cowboy Jack Cassidy (left) of Manchester, an American from Yorkshire called Klondyke Bill, Pedro the Gypsy from a nice home in Barnsley and a host of colourful characters. We were told a story of Cassidy riding his horse into the Digbeth arena and around the ring. Believe us, it was a tight squeze in there and we find that hard to believe!
Judo Pat Roach was another regular at Digbeth when he was just starting out, years before he became a big name, as were others later to make the big time – Johnny Saint, Al Marquette, Pete Roberts and Wild Angus. Lew allowed things to get a bit heated sometimes, and it wasn’t unknown for the wrestlers to fight outside the ring.
Fortunately, the local police station was a couple of doors away, and it wasn’t uncommon to see a few of the local bobbies coming into the hall to keep a eye on things, or more likely just have a free night out at the wrestling. One night they had to send for reinforcements when a few fans became a bit over enthusiastic.
One of the memorable nights of the Lew Phillips years was the 6th May 1969, the night Count Bartelli defended his Commonwealth heavyweight title against Pakistan’s Maruti Vadar. It was quite a night for a number of reasons.
The contest, which went to a fifteen round draw, was judged by many of those present to be one of the greatest matches they had witnessed. We also hear from a good source (but not confirmed by a secondary source) that Bartelli should have won the match but the Pakistani wrestler did not (or claimed to not) understand the instructions. The fifteen round draw resulted in many disgruntled fans missing their last bus home! The situation was acerbated (and again we only have one apparently reliable source) by Lew Philips delaying the start of the second half of the show because he was enjoying his drink in the bar!
At the end of the 1969 season Lew Phillips stopped promoting and a short time later, Wryton Promotions took over.
Suddenly fans had the chance to see the big names that we’d seen on tv. Pat Roach and Pete Roberts came back, because they were stars now.
They brought with them all the big names. McManus, Pallo, Nagasaki etc. graced the ring on Thursday nights until 1980 when the shows moved from the friendly and intimate Digbeth to the cavernous Aston Villa Leisure Centre.
It seemed great at first, but the magic started to go. The wrestling was good, but it just didn’t seem as exciting as in the old days.
Nothing is forever. Except the memories.
Wrestling Heritage 