By Elliott West
“While wholesalers were shutting their doors and going into lockdown, I started doing the building work, pretty much on my own, and haven’t had a day off since.”
Paul Clinton
Introduction
Stevenage has been starved of a snooker club since the Riley’s in the town centre closed its doors for the last time in 2014. A building that was nearly 80 years old and originally the Astonia Cinema first opened in 1935 before then becoming a bingo hall before a snooker club, was demolished and made way for 38 sheltered retirement apartments. Since this fateful moment, anyone who has wanted to play snooker, have had to travel to neighbouring Baldock or Hitchin.
A Snooker Sapling
However, the tides of times changed in 2020 when it was announced that a new snooker club would open in the Old Town on the high street. Paul Clinton, a former electrician, who now runs a local, independent brewery, Bog Brew Beers already had a site selling craft beer from the Broken Seal Tap Room. Just before the first lockdown, he was offered a new location at the back of the Old Town CIU and decided to convert the space into a small snooker club.
Considered by some as a risky new venture, especially at the start of a pandemic, Paul decided to prove the doubters wrong and began building work, a conversion that could be carried out at a quicker pace due to the quiet period. Work that he carried out himself and led to him not having a day off during the works.
With work now completed, the club although small and compact houses three snooker tables and a pool table, available to play via membership. Opened in July 2020, Stevenage Snooker Club has managed to ride the wave of the pandemic and come out the other side as a popular and profitable local business. Something that is now rare in these uncertain times and especially as it is snooker club, businesses that have closed by the dozen since the smoking ban was first introduced in 2007.
