Old Trafford Bowling Club Pavilion, Longford, Trafford

Summary

An amateur bowling club pavilion of 1877 by John Bowden in a Tudor Revival style over two storeys, with an unusually ornate interior.

Description

An amateur bowling club pavilion of 1877 by John Bowden.

MATERIALS: orange brick with buff sandstone dressings, applied half-timbering, slate roof.

PLAN: standing between the former railway line and Talbot Road within the historic sporting centre of Old Trafford, and fronting onto a crown green to the east, with a central range abutted by aisles to each side.

EXTERIOR: the pavilion is of two storeys in a Tudor Revival style with orange-brick ground floor and half-timbered upper floor, blue-brick head-and-sill bands and a projecting brick plinth with canted stone coping.

The east wall overlooks the green and comprises a gabled wide central bay with elaborate bargeboards, flanked by narrower bays each with a smaller gable above the two-light window and deep eaves. The central bay is recessed at first-floor, with a projecting balcony forming a veranda to the ground floor with latticed timber screen. Flanking the veranda are three-light windows with moulded stone lintels, stone sills, stepped-brick mullions and timber sashes. Between bays 2 and 3 is a decorative tall brick chimney with corbelled and stone-coped top; the equivalent at the left is truncated.

The three-bay north wall is of a similar appearance, with a gable at the left and central main entrance up a short flight of modern steps. The entrance door has elaborate iron hinges. Set back at the right is the blind north wall of the first-floor billiard room, with an undercroft outside the rear entrance.

The south wall is also of three bays, with a large gable at the right and smaller one at the left. There is no half-timbering but the first-floor windows have decorative surrounds and a column-mullion. The two chimney stacks on this range are truncated.

The west wall has a gabled one-bay return similar to the other walls, with two larger gabled bays to the right, both blind-rendered.

INTERIOR: the interior plan-form largely survives, with central ground-floor pavilion overlooking the veranda and green, south ladies’ room and north directors’ room, north-west entrance and stair lobby, and service rooms to the west. The first floor has the caretaker’s flat in the south range, central billiards room, and a cards room and lavatory flanking the stairs.

Moulded cornicing, ceiling roses, door surrounds and skirtings survive well and some panelled doors also remain. The curved staircase has an impressive timber newel and some spindle and some splat decorative cast-iron balusters, with ramped handrail. The billiards room has moulded pilasters and frieze, exaggerated coving with decorative plasterwork, an elaborate timber door surround and original (re-upholstered) bench seating built-in around the perimeter on a raised platform. It is also thought to retain a painted glazed ceiling above the inserted ceiling tiles. The club’s original score boards by the Globe Billiard Works, Manchester remain fixed to the wall. The cards room retains a cast-iron fire surround and built-in cupboards and safe. The caretaker’s flat retains a fire surround, built-in cupboards and panelled door.

History

The current pavilion of the Old Trafford Bowling Club was built in late 1877, on land which had been acquired in February of that year from Sir Humphrey de Trafford’s Trafford Park estate. The foundation stone was laid in July 1877 by Cllr Hampson, the chairman of the limited company, whose office was in Manchester’s Barton Arcade. The company had been formed on 26 January 1877, although the club’s age is unknown; it played a game against a Preston club in 1873, and in 1877 William Shore’s obituary stated that he had been its president for ‘some years’. It is possible that this was always the club’s venue (perhaps on a rental basis). The site occupies a corner of what had been, from 1847-1857, the ground of the Manchester Cricket Club (which merged with Lancashire Cricket Club in 1864 and established the current Old Trafford cricket ground). The cricketers moved out so the site could host the 1857 Manchester Art Treasures exhibition, and perhaps the bowls club moved in after that, or after the 1864 merger of the cricket clubs (one of the bowls club’s founders was also manager of the cricket club).

The building was designed by John Bowden, surveyor to the De Trafford estate, although not quite to the original plans on display at the club (which show the staircase on the other side of the entrance lobby). Although the company was formed by shopkeepers, merchants and artisans, at the time this was one of the most substantial clubhouses in amateur sport.

The pavilion is relatively unaltered internally and retains most of its original plan form and decorative joinery and plasterwork. Exceptions include the late-C20 bar servery and most of the doors have been replaced with modern fire doors, and fireplaces removed. The glazed timber wall to the ground-floor veranda has also been moved outwards to increase the size of the pavilion room, allowing doors to be inserted directly accessing the Directors’ and Ladies’ Rooms. An aerial photograph of 1934 shows that the west wall used to have applied timbering which is now absent. It also suggests that there used to be a basement entrance here, which is now concealed by the embankment down to the adjacent car park. Reportedly for safety reasons, a false ceiling has been inserted in the billiards room, below the original painted glazed ceiling featuring coats of arms, a panel of which is now displayed on the wall of the stairs.

Bowls is one of England’s oldest sports. Lancashire is considered to have been at the forefront of crown-green bowls in the C19, and was the heartland of this version of the game when it and flat-green bowls split in 1903. The name Old Trafford is internationally associated with sport, and as well as the senior cricket and football grounds, the area has hosted many other sports since the C18.

Reasons for Listing

The Old Trafford Bowling Club pavilion, an amateur bowls club pavilion of 1877, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* as a relatively rare example of a pre-1914 sports pavilion dating from the early period of historic amateur sport;
* for its architectural ambition and unusually large scale, with verandas on two storeys and ample fenestration to observe play on the bowling green, together with separate Ladies Room, Billiards Room and Cards Room;
* the pavilion survives in substantially intact form with much of its character remaining inside and out, including brick and half-timbered Tudor Revival exterior, and internal decorative timber and plasterwork, most notably in the Billiards Room, which also retains fixed seating and scoreboards, and is also thought to retain its impressive hand-painted glass ceiling (concealed by a modern finish).

Historic interest:

* it represents the pinnacle of bespoke buildings for amateur bowls clubs, epitomising the important role bowls played in the sporting and recreational life of many communities across the nation in the later C19, in particular in the north-west heartland of Crown Green bowls.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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