Cricklewood

In 1901 a rink in Bayswater, London existed at the Porchester Hall run by the bicycle manufacturing firm Messrs. Goy & Co. The same year a young man by the name of Leon Meredith got interested in cycling but also enjoyed roller skating and he could often be found in Porchester Hall on eight wheels as well as his usual two. Meredith quickly took the cycling world by storm and in 1904 won the World 100km Motor Paced World Championship at Crystal Palace.

By September 1906 and still only 24 years of age Meredith had acquired the Porchester Hall rink which was now being run by his mother and renamed the Meredith’s Roller Skating Rink. Meredith was now making a real name for himself in the cycling world and in 1908 secured an Olympic gold medal in the team pursuit.

Initially Meredith’s cycling exploits were funded by his uncle, William Boyer, who had a building business on Praed Street in Paddington, but Meredith was also a canny businessman in his own right. One of his roller skating instructors had a brother, Joseph Bain, who happened to run the Constrictor Tyre Company in Forest Gate that made tyres for bikes. He invested in the company and soon took it over, using it to import more and more cycle parts from the continent. As 1909 approached he had an ambition to open up a new roller rink and decided on a patch of land adjacent to the Cricklewood Broadway (part of the A5 Watling Street). Cricklewood already had a recently opened roller rink, the “Ideal Roller Rink” almost directly opposite where Meredith wanted to build his. Despite this, plans were drafted and to much fanfare the “New Cricklewood Roller Rink” opened its doors on Saturday 30th October 1909 (not 14th September 1909 as some sources suggest).

Meredith ran the rink with his cycling partner and pace-maker Bill Skuse and taking their cycling knowledge into roller skating designed the rink to have a very slight banking to increase the speed (this would later be removed). Right from the off the rink was a success and took patrons away from the Ideal Rink across the road. The Ideal Rink was short lived and eventually became a billiards hall as the New Cricklewood Rink flourished.

In November 1909 the rink hosted the first hockey match of the season which was won by Goy’s United. Meredith became a member of the Goy’s club and in March 1910 raced to victory on skates at the recently opened Maida Vale rink to become the very first British Five Mile Champion. Despite the success of Meredith’s rink it did not have a registered club with the National Skating Association, and so when he successfully defended his Five Mile title in 1911 at London’s Olympia he was skating for Brixton.

In the years leading up to the First World War the rink was opened every Thursday as a dance hall. In fact, it was recognised at one stage as the largest dance hall in London. For the other six days in the week the rink continued to hold skating sessions twice daily.

In November 1914, shortly after war broke out, the rink also hosted a rifle range. Possibly capitalising on the war now raging across Europe the rifle club, presided over by Meredith’s new father-in-law, Lt.-Col. Charles Pinkham JP, opened its doors to both members and non-members alike. However, by Christmas Day the rink had closed having been commandeered by the British Government to be used as a workshop for the war effort.

The closure was short lived and by 1915 the rink had reopened. What changed is unclear but it is not unfeasible to suggest that Pinkham, who was also a Middlesex County Alderman as well as holding many other offices within local government, had some influence on matters. (He would later go on to be knighted and awarded an OBE). With the support of Meredith the rink regularly held charity events in aid of soldiers and casualties as the war continued.

After the war skating continued unabated and in 1921 Meredith had a new dance hall built adjacent to the rink. Shortly after that a cinema was also erected and the trio of buildings became a regular haunt for locals.

On 4th March 1926 the National Skating Association (NSA) organised the running of the British Five Mile Championship at Cricklewood. It was the first time the rink had been used as a venue to host a national championship. By now the rink had a club affiliated to the NSA and when Robert Symondson crossed the finish line ahead of British internationals Joe Weatherburn (Aldwych) and John Spry (Aldwych), the Cricklewood speed club had their very first British Champion.

In 1927 Meredith sold the rink and associated building to Charles Clore and his father, Israel. Clore was only 22 years old when he stood in the entrance to the rink and sold admission tickets to passers by. It was his first venture into business but laid the foundation for his later fortunes. As Clore moved on to bigger and better things he kept the rink as a reminder of how he started out. Clore's sister, Fanny, married Abraham Davis and Clore appointed him as the Managing Director for the rink. Davis would take over from Robert Burns who had originally organised the two roller skating clubs at the rink, Cricklewood (speed) and Belmar (dancing). In later years Davis's own son, Conrad, would become a prominent figure in roller skating circles when he took on the management of the Birmingham Embassy rink in the late 1950's.

Considered more of a winter past time it was not uncommon for rinks to close in the summer months for refurbishment or simply because it was more expensive to open the doors when the patronage was low. That wasn’t the case with Cricklewood. In fact, such was the popularity of roller skating at the rink that it continued to open all year round. As Meredith had done previously Clore recognised that the rink could be used for other events and introduced boxing to the venue on occasion.

On 27th January 1930 whilst on holiday in Davos, Switzerland, Leon Meredith collapsed and died of a heart attack. Being only 48 years of age it was a huge shock not only to the cycling world but of course the Cricklewood rink which he had such an affiliation with. Further tragedy struck in February 1931 when the secretary of the Cricklewood speed club, F. H. Greenwood, died aged just 28 after a short illness. As a mark of respect none of the club members competed in the Five Mile Championships that year.

In February 1933 the Cricklewood speed club split and the Broadway speed club was formed a month later. Although the rink now had two speed clubs, Broadway did not affiliate itself to the NSA until the 1933-34 season. Not long afterwards the Cricklewood club disbanded and any remaining members joined the now popular Broadway club and the name Cricklewood was now only associated with the rink.

Although war broke out once more in 1939 the rink continued to operate, albeit on a much smaller scale. The Broadway club continued to hold its regular events such as the Cricklewood Cup and the Clore Cup, but by 1941 competitions ceased and the rink only opened to general skating. During a bombing raid the rink suffered fire damage but luckily the floor was unaffected and only the amenity areas such as canteen were readily affected.

After the war racing resumed towards the end of 1946 by which time the rink, along with thirteen other British rinks, had become affiliated to the Roller Skating Rink Operators Association (RSROA), an American organisation that had been founded a decade earlier. Over the next few years that association would cause significant disruption to British speed skating (more details can be found here "The Forgotten Champion"). On 29th January 1947 the NSA once again used the rink to hold a British Championship event, the men’s Half Mile.

The Broadway club was not without its war casualties, most notably British Champion Jackie Robbins who was killed in an air accident aged just 22. There were some skaters who had survived the war and were successful either side of the conflict such as Frank Lamb, but as the war ended a new group of talented skaters rose to the top. The likes of Don Brown, Denis Hill, Jackie Reeves, Yvonne Brod, June Gillard and Joyce Robinson were all well known and well respected racers. Roller skating was enjoying a resurgence and numbers of speed skaters rapidly increased to record levels. With the clubs’ successes they had become the number one speed club in the country and the team everyone aspired to beat. In fact, in July 1947 the entire British team that took part in the very first World Congress Championships in Oakland, California, consisted entirely of Broadway skaters.

Also, in 1947 the rink was used to film a scene in a film called “Black Memory” starring Michael Medwin and Myra O’Connell. A number of the Broadway club were filmed as extras.

Despite Broadway’s successes, in early 1952 the club were unceremoniously kicked out of the rink. Irish builder John Byrne bought the rink from Charles Clore and had plans to turn the venue into an elaborate Irish dance hall. Although the building had fallen into a state of disrepair with some holes now becoming apparent in the maple floor and the odd occasional roof leak it was still the speed club’s ‘home’. However, on 6th January 1952 the Broadway club held their very last speed skating event on the rink, the Cricklewood Cup won by Cyril Cooper, and duly moved their base to Alexandra Palace.

Shortly afterwards the rink became known as The Galtymore Irish Ballroom. Skating still continued there but only roller dance skating was allowed, although the odd hockey match also occasionally took place. Speed skating, on the other hand, was not seen as being in keeping with the recent renovations funded by Byrne. The adjacent dance hall would eventually become Ashton’s night club.

Over time roller dance too stopped, ending any roller skating activities in the building for good but the Galtymore would continue for the next fifty six years. With the decline of industry and the number of Irish residents in the area the ballroom closed its doors in May 2008. A few years later and the buildings would be demolished completely. As the last brick was cleared away very few would have remembered how a building erected by an Olympic gold medal cyclist over 100 years earlier had bought so much pleasure to those who had indulged in a roller skating pastime. They certainly wouldn’t have known that the Cricklewood rink once housed Britain’s elite speed skaters who were as good as anybody in the world on their day.