Clubs > Ovenden > Ovenden Clubhouse

Ovenden Clubhouse

In 1980, the Ovenden club agreed to rent part of Four Fields for a clubhouse. With backing from Tetley’s Brewery and grants from Yorkshire and Humberside Sports Council and Calderdale Sports Council enough funds were raised to commence the project. There were some serious fundraising efforts by the players, supporters and volunteers of the club – John and Terry Hoey and Bob English being prominent – with bucket collections and dances held at Enderby Hall at Forest Cottage. Fund raising also used a “pre-membership” scheme which was 50p enabling the club to have some available cash. The link with Tetley’s brewery was a close one and the local representative arranged a couple of tours of the company’s Leeds brewery each year. There were also weekly draws held at the club’s Friendly Inn base.

The clubhouse was opened in 1982 and this gave the club a permanent home for the next 4 decades. At the outset, it was the Ovenden committee members who did turns behind the bar although soon there was a steward appointed.

Martin Alders and wife, Rose, was the first steward although he did ask people such as Dave Wilson, to do the odd hour behind the bar. There were “Gentlemen’s Nights” on a Monday evening which was the steward’s night off!

The Ovenden clubhouse rapidly became the hub of community activity on the Ovenden estate. Indeed, former player Lea Roberts recalls spending “four evenings a week training at the club, playing on Saturdays and always going back to the club home or away and having Sunday lunch at the club, going back for Sunday evenings.”

Lea, now a highly successful professional speaker and comedian, was part of the Ovenden Gang Shows which was a wonderful foundation for his career. Lea also used the club to rehearse. Lea clearly recalls his early days at Ovenden whereas a young lad he played soccer but went training with his dad, Eric Roberts and travelled to watch Ovenden games. He recalls being sat on the front seat of the team bus with his dad! At 15, Lea saw the light and started to play in the new U17 team coached by David Adams and progressed onto the U19’s and spent time with the Halifax Colts team.

The Ovenden club was truly the centre of the Ovenden estate and its community with regulars not only being the families of those playing at the club but also families in the area attracted to the social facilities.

One of these was a young Lisa Chapman, who still enthuses about her childhood memories of the “Ovenden club” back in the 1980’s.
“I have never been in a place like it since. I was taken up to the club every Sunday lunchtime by my parents while the roast cooked at grandma’s house. The club was full of men playing cards and dominoes with the room full of smoke. But as kids we could get some fresh air by getting low under the smoke cloud.

“The club has a friendly atmosphere with the sound of dominoes clicking. With Grandma drinking her pints from a barrel glass and drinking big, burly men with booming voices under the table. Grandad would give me a stern look if I mentioned out loud any of the dominoes he guarded in his hand!”

Lisa continued:
My parents would go out on a Friday evening down to the club while we stayed at home with a “babysitter.” My Mum also did some cleaning at the club on a Saturday morning so we would go down with her and have pop and crisps, we could run around on Four Fields with all the other kids as soon as the rugby had finished. Great memories.”

Suzie Morton and Karen Crossley, who volunteered at the club in the 1990’s also recalled the warm atmosphere of the Ovenden clubhouse. Suzie emphasised that for a young girl the clubhouse.
“was always welcoming. We could go in on our own and always have someone to talk to.”

Sadly, after years of structural decline and vandalism, the Ovenden clubhouse had become unsafe and on 3rd of November 2019 the doors were closed for the very last time. It was described as a “very emotional day.”

The sad outline of the clubhouse, with the new changing room building in the background, is all that remains to remind everyone of the happy times had by one and all.

The Ovenden club planned to move back into the refurbished Forest Cottage with its new state of the art changing rooms – which would at least be a vast improvement of the original “concrete bath” used 40 years previously prior to the building of the clubhouse.