Two Liverpool entrepreneurs offered "something new" to the 1970s nightlife scene that was "out of the box" for its time.
Today, it isn't unusual to come across a nightclub, bar or restaurant with an interesting concept. In an age of social media, we love visiting our favourite Liverpool businesses and snapping an 'Instragrammable' moment.
But decades before camera phones and the extravagant and innovative business ideas we know today, two Liverpool businessmen were arguably ahead of their time. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, owners of Compass Catering, George 'Jud' Evans and Colin Peers teamed up to open two floating clubs and a restaurant housed in a former RAF plane.
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The first was the Clubship Landfall in Liverpool city centre, which the pair bought in 1968. The Liverpool ECHO recently took a look back at the club, which is still remembered for its disco dancefloor and "hilarious" ticketed events.
Here, we take a brief look back at their unusual business ventures and the impact they had on the nightlife scene. Did you ever attend one of these venues? Let us know in the comments section below.
Clubship Landfall
Moored in Salthouse Dock, the Clubship Landfall nightclub was originally a converted tank landing craft LCT 7074 that started life in 1944 and took part in the D-Day landings in June that year. Two years later, it became the floating home of the Master Mariners’ Association of Liverpool in 1946.
But by the late 1960s, the venue took on a completely new life when business partners George 'Jud' Evans and Colin Peers bought it and transformed it into a popular nightlife venue. Clubbers would come onboard and walk through a hatch-like door to lower levels where they could grab a drink from the bar or head to the colourful dancefloor that lit up from underneath.
After owning the club for over a decade, in the 1980s the Clubship Landfall was sold and at one point sunk until it was rescued and restored. Landing Craft Tank 7074 (LCT 7074) is the only known surviving ship of its kind which took part in the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944 and has since undergone extensive conservation and restoration work, now on display at The D-Day Story in Portsmouth.
George's eldest child, Sven, 60, from Halewood, spent lot of his childhood at the Landfall and also remembers it hosting one of his birthday parties with school friends. He said: "I spent my childhood on that boat, every weekend, every school holiday, I was down there and I basically grew up in the docks in Liverpool.
" I first went down to see it in 1965 and the last time I went there was 1977 and I saw changes take place. When they first took it on the boat belonged to the Master Mariners Association and it was like a gentleman club.
"They took it on and eventually it became a nightclub and in its heyday it was very popular. It was a paradise really and I had a great childhood down on the docks."
Along with her siblings Leif, Bjorn, Sven and Kirsti, George's daughter, Freya Evans Swogger, said her childhood Saturdays were spent treating the ship like their own "personal playground." She said that behind the bar was a broken windscreen-glass and coloured perspex map of the world that her dad made himself.
Freja said: "We were each allowed us kids to get one thing from the bar, that was our special treat. I always remember getting an old fashioned bottle of coke, the ones that were kind of curvy like Marilyn Monroe and I remember drinking that and feeling very glamourous and looking at the bar with all its backdrop with lights and broken glass and thinking how glamorous it must be.
"But I think our experience of it was so different to the grownups, it was a bit of a mysterious to us. One of my favourite things about it was downstairs in the main room there was a disco dancefloor, 70s style, that lit up from underneath with the coloured squares - I thought that was really cool."
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North Westward Ho!
Bobbing gently on the still waters of Salford’s Pomona Docks, t he North Westward Ho! started its life as a nightclub in the early 1970s. Another venture between George Evans and Colin Peers, clubbers would embark on the ship up a gangplank to dance the night away, play pool or enjoy a meal.
After permission was granted, the ship was brought up the ship canal and be rthed at Pomona. It had originally been the Isle of Wight Ferry Vecta, built in 1938, and latterly the excursion ship Westward Ho! before becoming a nightclub with different plush bars, a restaurant and a venue room.
It is also said to have been at the Dunkirk evacuation. But many still have fond memories of its life as a floating nightclub and how unique it was for a generation of clubbers, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Sven said: "It was a ferry between Southampton and the Isle of Wight and I actually went down with him when I was eight-years-old to view it. He took a marine architect with him and we went to Cornwall where the boat was.
"The engines had failed while it was out of sea and it was decommissioned so he bought it. They had it towed all the way up from Cornwall across the Bristol Channel and eventually into Liverpool bay and down the Manchester ship canal.
"They spent a year or so converting it into the club. It had been a passenger ferry most of the infrastructure in there went and they replaced it with bar and restaurant areas."
Freja said she remembers the early days of the club before it officially opened its doors in 1974. She said: " I spent quite a while there, sleeping on board while it was being done up before it opened as a club.
"I remember it being huge, it seemed like a huge boat. An awful lot of work had to be done, I remember a lot of drilling and nailing and painting and they were very busy.
"I know my dad did a lot of it himself. I do remember thinking why is this here, but I would have only been about nine at the time."
The Comet
Due to the popularity of Salford’s North Westward Ho, the same year the Liverpool owners purchased a Dehavilland Comet and the RAF aircraft was parked besides the ship, offering something new to their existing customers. Back in the 1970s, customers would venture to Pomona Docks to board the 21-year-old plane - known as the Comet - to enjoy a delicious meal or have a drink in its 'cockpit' cocktail lounge.
The Comet was built by De Havilland Aircraft Company Limited at Hatfield and is said to have first flown in 1953. After being struck off charge 1974, that same year the former RAF plane was acquired by the Compass Catering and flown to Manchester by a crew of six from the Wyton air base in Cambridgeshire.
The plane cost £10,000 and had its wings, tail and fin removed to take a 12-mile road journey to Salford. In the early 1980s, the Comet is said to have been broken up, with the cockpit section being sold to a collector and it is believed that by 2000, what remained of the Comet was scrapped.
Sven said: "They wanted to expand and make it a whole attraction. They bought the Comet from the MOD (Ministry of Defence) and they flew it on its last flight ever.
"I think I went onto the Comet only once when they were still in the process of converting it and they built a cocktail lounge in there but I confess to never actually seeing it when it was up and running in its intended purpose. I remember sticking my head around the door because I was a boy and they were saying to me its dangerous, we can't let you loose in there.
"They had converted the flight cabin into a cocktail lounge and left most of the pilots and navigators seats in position where drinks were served . All of the planes equipment, switch panels and navigation equipment were left in situ so it must have been quite some experience."
The latest series of Memory Lane is in major retailers including Asda, Tesco, Home Bargains and selected newsagents now. This series of the bumper picture special looks at fun in the sun - with stunning photographs and treasured memories of family holidays from years gone by. You can also buy Memory Lane online here.
Freja also said she remembers seeing local TV news coverage on the Comet as a child. She said: "They bought this plane, the Comet, and had to take part or all of the wings off and had to transport it down part of the motorway.
"I didn't understand when I was a kid that to do that you had to put it on the back of a big lorry. I thought they'd driven it down the motorway like a car with no wings."
Looking back on the Comet as an adult, Sven said he thinks his dad and Colin's idea was "amazing and risky." He said: "It was imaginative and bold, quite out of the box.
"It takes guts to do something like that, to have an imagination like that and follow through with it as a business venture, financial and otherwise. I think they were both trying to offer something new and very different."
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