LOWERHOUSE Mills Club – or Lowerhouse Canteen as it is known – celebrated a landmark in 1966, when it opened a £10,000 concert room and lounge.

The social centre had first been opened in 1921, in a booming area of the textile town.

The men at the mills run by cotton manufacturers John Dugdale needed somewhere to eat their sandwiches and chat during lunch breaks, so works officials sponsored a canteen.

Within two years it had been furnished into a club and membership soared, as local workers took the opportunity to sit down for a pint and a chat after work.

Alf Sandford, club secretary in the sixties, commented: “Although I was not around at the start, but the recurring comment is always that no-one realised just how prosperous that early idea was to grow.”

However, come the slump of the 1930s and massive redundancies in the mills, saw the Lowerhouse club lose every one of its members and it stayed closed until the early 1960s.

In 1962 a new committee was formed to try and save the building, which needed overhauling on a grand scale and a year later a plan was launched to give it a facelift.

Along with Alf, the new officials, president J McCarthy, treasurer, J Sagar and vice president E Champman set about to find new members.

Success mushroomed and by 1966, 45 years on from its creation, the club was booming again.