"Pfizer Social Club was over the Empress Ballroom at 14-16 Dover Road from 1958 to about 1968. When I used the place Jack and Esme Joyce were steward and Stewardess. I used the place on a Thursday evenings which was a jazz evening dancing to records or dancing to The Sundowners
At a later date Martin Jones and his friend and partner Peter Hickie opened the "Sundowner Club" on the 2nd floor of the Empress Ballroom site, which later had to move to the bottom of Dover Road 100 yards away under the old Co-op - due to town and road restructuring. The club gave opportunity to new bands to start their own careers in the music business, an ideal still required today.
Going up the road from the entrance towards Payers Park were shops under the Hillside Club, an alley to the Wooddcutters, Swift School of Motoring, a greengrocers, Michael's fish & chip shop, R.O. Wiltshire, calor gas stockist, Renham's cycle shop, a linen, fancy goods & toy shop and The Copper Kettle, tobacconists, confectioners and stationers.
All the buildings from Osborne's butchers at the bottom of this part of Dover Road were demolished in 1973
Alan Taylor
Comments