Glyde House
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The Topic started here on January 2nd, 2014.
Glyde House has had a full career. Built as a church, the building became a school, then the NALGO / Unison office, then the base of Yorkshire Arts. It is now home to Business Innovation Start Up Gumption, is host to a variety of art organisations, and is also the official office of Gerry Sutcliffe MP.
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The Bradford Irish Club - six years
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As our time here went from March 6th 2008 to December 19th 2013, the Irish Club is in third place in terms of longevity, after the Star (22 years) and Melborn (10 years).
The photo shows a signboard with the event for the last club night here, Pat Sherry and Stuart Douglas, along with The Holbeck Mummers, Christmas 2013.
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The Cock & Bottle - two years
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The Topic was here only from January 2006-February 2008.
Just a room in a pub and without a dedicated stage, it was a good fit for the 50-year old Topic, being a venerable pub: an inn of some sort was first licensed on or near the site in 1747 and ale is said to have been brewed there at the time. The name The Cock & Bottle was in use by 1822.
More on the pub's history here.
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The Melborn Hotel - ten years
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The Melborn was built in White Abbey Road in 1935 with a music performance room part of the plans. Originally it was Melbourne, by connection with the local brewery, but after a dispute the spelling changed. The landlord of 15 years, Eamon Halloran, hosted a range of other live music nights, especially Irish music.
The Topic was here until December 29th 2005, when the building was sold and ceased being a pub. For most of those years Philomena Hingston ran the club.
The piano and the door to the music room were transferred to the Cock & Bottle.
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The Peel Hotel - four years
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The Peel in Richmond Road, not far from the University, was the home of the Topic for only just over four years, from March 8th 1991 to July 8th 1995.
Club organisers during its sojourn here were Deanna Norman, Brenda Baldwin and Roger Sutcliffe - who was the first to play in the new venue - and Philomena.
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The Star Hotel - twenty-two years
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The Star in Westgate was the record-holder for the Topic, hosting the club for 22 years until the move to the Peel in March 1991.
The Topic moved there after a year of turmoil. A total of 4 venues was tried in 1969 - the Rawson Hotel for one night, the Ukrainian Club and the Market Tavern, but the Star proved to be a permanent base, with the enthusiastic support of the Landlord and Landlady, Marion and Friedal.
Cockersdale was the last act to play here.
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The Ukrainian Club - 7 months
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The Ukrainian Club at 4, Clifton Villas, was our host for seven months from February 7th to September 19th 1969.
The club is still a going concern, and indeed has a 200-seat performance area these days, but is no longer at this location.
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Market Tavern (6 weeks) and Rawson Hotel (one night!)
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1969 was a very strange time, a good year for spaceflight, a poor year for wine, and not looking good for Topic venue longevity at the start of the year.
We were in the Market Tavern for 6 weeks in total... now called Balanga, on Godwin Street, and I doubt it looked like that in 1969. Then just one night in the Rawson Hotel
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Sun Inn - five years
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The Sun Inn in Sunbridge Road (now Sun Hotel, and Bradford's premier gay pub) hosted the Topic for five years, from mid-1963 to the 22nd November 1968.
Denis Sabey wrote in Tykes' News back in1968 that at the Sun "the club has fluctuated between some of the best nights of folk music I can remember and some which I would rather not remember, but I am happy to be able to say that over the past year or so both audiences and singing have taken a marked turn for the better-so much so that the 'House Full' signs have been dug out and dusted and singers coming in after 9 o’ clock have been lucky to get a hearing even on singers' nights."
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Fox & Goose - 6 months
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The Topic was here from August 1959 to April 1960, or thereabouts, and apparently the pub was demolished around 1990, after the ring road was built.
According to the report from a later landlord (1980s) on Closed Pubs , the pub was near the old Bradford Canal and Basin and used to stable horses for the barges that came along the canal to the centre of Bradford in the late 19th and early 20th century. He remembers one of the old regulars telling him that when he was a child, pre-WW1, that boxing matches were held at the rear of the pub.
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Oddfellows' / Unity Hall - five years
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The Topic moved here for the period mid 1958 - August 1959, then again from mid-1960 to May 1963. Unity Hall, in Rawson Square, was leased by the German community in Bradford and was known as Schiller-Verein. Later it became a Masonic Hall and in 1910 became the base for the Oddfellows firendly society.
Unity Hall is also the name of a journalist who has been writing about the royal family since the 1950's. But she has nothing to do with this building.
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Laycock's Rooms - 18 months
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This is where the Topic first started, back in 1956, in an upstairs room. Laycock's in Albion Court had been a hotel and a cafe and a centre for political debating - GB Shaw spoke there, and JB Priestley, Kropotkin and William Morris, and Philip Snowden from Cowling, who went on to become Labour's first Chancellor of the Exchequer.
According to Topic founder Alex Eaton, the room they used was dingy, dusty and depressing, with heaped up chairs at the back and a table covered with green stained baize.
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