Heritage
The last purpose-built youth club in Nottingham
Most clubs like ours were sold, converted or knocked down. This one is still standing, still on Terrace Street, and still doing the job it was built for.
A building is not heritage on its own. What makes this one worth keeping is that for more than eighty years the same few streets have used it — for youth nights, for weddings, for funerals, for Saturday school, for Black History Month, for whatever the neighbourhood happened to need that decade.
The club opened in 1939, part of a national movement of boys' clubs built to give working class young people somewhere to go. Nottingham had several. Ours is the only one still standing and still in use for its original purpose.
From the 1980s the club became a Black-led organisation, reflecting a neighbourhood where over half of residents are from Black and minority ethnic communities, and working in particular with young people of Caribbean background. From 2014 the door opened wider again — to Eastern European families, African refugees and people seeking asylum.
Timeline
Eighty-odd years, in short
1939
A boys’ club opens on Terrace Street
The club is formed as part of the old boys’ club movement, in a building put up for the purpose. That building is still the one we use.
1980s
A Black-led club, for a changing neighbourhood
The club begins supporting and developing young people from the area’s growing Caribbean community — work that shapes everything that follows.
1991
Registered as a charity
Formal registration as a charity, number 1007675, putting the club on a footing that could outlast any one generation of volunteers.
2014
New arrivals, same open door
Our reach widens to Eastern Europeans, African refugees and asylum seekers settling in Hyson Green, alongside the communities already here.
Today
The last of its kind in the city
We are the only remaining purpose-built youth club in Nottingham, open seven days a week as a youth club, a venue and a community hub.
Still in use
Fifty weekends a year
The hall that hosted boys' club boxing nights in the 1940s now hosts christenings, wedding receptions, wakes, community markets and Black History Month events. Local people hold their own events here around fifty weekends of the year.
That is the point of the place, and it always was: a big room, in the middle of a neighbourhood, that belongs to the people who live there.
Help us fill the gaps
Were you a member?
Our written history is thinner than it should be. If you came here as a young person, worked here, or have photographs, programmes, team sheets or newsletters tucked away, we would like to hear from you — and to copy anything you are willing to share.