GOOD SPORTS FLOCKED TO POPULAR BRIGG PUB

 

Relatively few pictures taken inside the Ancholme Inn, Brigg, during social events have survived down the decades.
Here are a couple we took in late February 1998 when Brigg Town Cricket Club held a fund-raising quiz night, with associated games of darts and dominoes. It was aimed at getting players together again after the winter break.

Cormac Kenny and Ryan North team up on one of the tables (above), while Patrick Kenny and Stan Mosey are seen on the oche (below).
 

 
This event was held in the sizeable function room - admission to which was gained through the side entrance, off the extensive car park.
The Ancholme was built in 1960. Some great nights - with live music and discos - were enjoyed at the pub, which reached the peak of popularity during Alan Long's tenure as landlord.
Many organisations used the Ancholme function room for events of all kinds, ranging from pigeon and angling clubs to Brigg Amateur Social Historians' monthly talks.
It was smaller and less expensive to use than the cavernous Corn Exchange (subsequently demolished) and the Angel Hotel Ballroom (converted to the Angel Suite in the mid-1990s).
The Ancholme was one of many social venues used by Brigg Town Cricket Club (founded in 1973) for its annual trophy presentation evenings in the latter decades of the 20th century.
Early ones took place at the Angel and others followed at The Hawthorns (Brigg Town FC), the Queens Arms, the Black Bull and Brigg Sugar Factory Social Club, off Scawby Road, Scawby Brook. Town used the factory sportsground for first team home games in the period prior to the plant's closure during the early 1990s.
The Ancholme Inn entered teams in local games leagues for all, or most, of its life - with the clicking of dominoes and the noise of darts hitting the board being familiar to midweek drinkers.
The pub served its last pints in 2012 and was later demolished to make way for a housing development off Grammar School Road.

The Ancholme Inn, late in 2012, following closure. The function room is to the right.