43 replies to this topic

[Alan]

Who remembers the original etched glass doors into the Fleece ballroom. There was a notice above them that really puzzled me as a kid in the 40s and 50s. "Tickets must be shewn". I assume that this was some kind of early 20th century or stylized spelling of "shown"

[kes]

Some posh people in Eccleston still say it like that Alan.!

[Griffin]

Most dictionaries would now term it an archaic form. Its use was widespread in railway stations and the like in the context you cite. It probably had a slight connotation of gentility among the desperately class-conscious rail commuters and dance-goers. I seem to recall that the Authorised Version of the Bible spells the word that way, so it was current usage at the tail-end of the Elizabethan period.

[brunty]

alan you are on about the fleece i remember it ,it should never have been demolished.
compered with the crap pubs and bars we have in town now it was 100% better hands down.
we used to go in mostly on friday nights trying[to tap] never suceeded,anyway do you remember the lady who waited
on dressed in black,black hair brushed back in a bun very stern,approx 40ish took your empties bang on time.

[Alan]

I remember her very well Brunty. After I left St Helens in the sixties, the only pubs I ever drank in on return were Fleece, Market, Gerrard, Abbey and Lingholm so my memories of St Helens pubs are all of the table service, mind your Ps and Qs type places.

[gypsygeoff]

I only went in the Fleece a few times,once to me mates wedding do.Was the bar at the back? It always looked a lovely building,when was it demolished?

[Alan]

The bar was at the back. I imagine it was demolished in that mad socialist era in the 70s when everything else of any character was demolished

[ellie ellins]

Socialist me arse. Socialists are to blame for everything you know. He is worse than those who blame Thatcher for everything.

[brunty]

alan it was demolished well into the 80s we had friends stay there maybe 1987.

[ellie ellins]

i stayed there in 1986 too

[Alan]

The St Helens Socialist Republic wasn't disbanded until the last year or so

[Griffin]

When I was attending an evening class in Italian at the Technical College in 1985, we used to repair to the Fleece afterwards for drinks. The bar had been extensively refurbished, and it was a really nice, sophisticated place. The very antithesis, in fact, of all the current bars in the town. There was a player piano, a modern, electronic one controlled somehow from behind the bar, which used to be playing without human intervention. One of our number, an accountant from Rainford, was a talented pianist in the modern jazz idiom, and he used to play sometimes. I find it hard to fathom that the Fleece was done away with for two new shops. It was a link with a different age, when people had standards.

[Alan]

griffin, on Oct 20 2007, 01:29 PM, said:

It was a link with a different age, when people had standards.

Hence its demise. It stood out like a sore thumb in Marie Rimmer's socialist greyness and lowest common denominator standard setting. You been missing or summat?

[Griffin]

There was a rumour to that effect; but, unlike the Fleece, here I am. Re. the socialist thing, I wonder if it's true that the Central Library used to subscribe to obscure publications from Vietnam and North Korea to show solidarity with the gallant workers of those countries, while it stopped getting the Angling Times, Rugby Leaguer and other traditional favourites to pay for the aforesaid commie magazines? Or was it a Daily Mail-style moral panic story?

[eddiedunc]

Alan, on Oct 20 2007, 03:27 PM, said:

Hence its demise. It stood out like a sore thumb in Marie Rimmer's socialist greyness and lowest common denominator standard setting. You been missing or summat?

I think The Fleece went before Marie Rimmer's time