Batting for Batley
SIR: I was interested to read the piece by Reverend Steve Morris on Las Vegas, West Yorkshire (June issue), but I wish that he would get his facts correct.
Fact 1: bulldozers were never introduced to demolish the building. After the Variety Club closed down, it was resurrected as The Frontier in the early 1980s and closed in July 2016. After a major refit, the building reopened as JD Gyms on 16th June 2017. Although currently closed because of COVID-19, it was a thriving gym and I am sure will be again once we get back to the ‘new normal’.
Fact 2: Batley was never a mining town but was one of the centres of the Heavy Woollen District, covered in mills, not mines. Since the closure of the mills, many have been converted for bed manufacturing.
I thoroughly enjoy The Oldie but, when it is glaringly obvious that a contributor has not checked his facts, let alone visited the area concerned, and this person is a Reverend, I get angry. Batley, ‘my town’, may not be the Las Vegas that the Corrigans wanted it to be, but neither is it a run-down, second-rate town. Like most towns and cities, it’s like the ‘curate’s egg’. Robert Dudley, Batley, West Yorkshire