The OPM Club Story

It’s now more than 60 years since the first OPM Clubhouse opened, at Efford, at the top of a small narrow road running off Efford Lane. It was a fairly nondescript, single storey affair, with boarded up windows that was low on charm and running close to empty in terms of atmosphere. Nevertheless it had zeitgeist on its side. Before the war there had been no such animal as the teenager. Many young people left school at thirteen, a few stayed on for their school certificate while fewer still went on to further education. With the post war baby boom and the problems finding work for the growing population, there arose a generation that lived at home longer, had a small amount of disposable cash – pocket money – and a huge amount of attitude.

You’d put a nice bit of text here describing this image, maybe it’d be an early shot of OPM members or the clubhouse at Efford.

As youthful skiffle groups succeeded the middle aged dance bands and rock and roll ensembles trumped both, so the teddy boy morphed more generally into the ‘teenager’, and increasingly there was a new section of society with time on their hands.

It was also a time for social exploration, more young people had access to transport – cars and motorcycles and each of these offered exciting times away from home. Partly in order to keep young people off the streets and give them something to do, the 1960s saw a massive growth in the provision of youth clubs, not just here but across the western world.

Here in Plymouth they blossomed, with their table tennis tables, darts, snooker, pool and record players. Sports clubs were also doing well and former Plymouth College pupils were having hours of fun on cricket, hockey and rugby pitches around Devon and Cornwall.

A number of OPMs had been meeting regularly at the Penguin pub (now the Tap and Barrel), down from Mutley Plain, when, somehow, the OPM Club managed to buy the old sports facility of the Beechwood – Bowyers – factory at Efford. Described as a very run-down building with a sports field, tennis court and car park, it quickly became the focus of a great deal of excited activity for a number of young and youthful OPMs. Although it came with little in the way of soft furnishings, regular working parties, and some generous early donations quickly transformed it into a hive of activity.

You’d put a nice bit of text here describing this image, maybe it’d be an early shot of OPM members or the clubhouse at Efford.

Second hand furniture was donated and a substantial amount of carpet was acquired from the old Gaumont Cinema in Union Street. More significantly still, the Club, as a private members’ club, managed to get a 2am licence at a time when the only other 2am licence in town of any general consequence was held by Plymouth Sailing School (a venue the much frequented by young naval officers from Manadon and known affectionately as the GX –‘groin exchange’ ‒ it is now Annabels).

This, together with the introduction of a number of fruit machines (aka one-armed bandits or gambling machines), gradually saw the club become a popular, and viable venue. Manned almost entirely by volunteers, visiting sporting teams envied the set up. Back then our rugby, hockey and cricket sides were almost entirely made up of past pupils and members of staff and most sport was conducted on a social rather than overtly competitive basis.

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As the 1960s progressed so too did the popularity of this unlikely venue in the heart of Efford. The fact that drink driving laws were somewhat lax, as indeed were the observation of the drinking laws generally in a private members club – I remember drinking there from at least age 16 if not younger – meant that the club thrived.

Many OPMs (and OPMs in the making … schoolboys) would pitch up around 11.30pm having been ejected from pubs that closed half an hour or so earlier and spend another hour or two drinking. Most would drive or get a lift, taxis were a rare luxury, after all why waste good drinking money on a taxi. No Ubers in those days, no mobile phones either, just a payphone in hallway and anyway, in those pre- decimal days 10/- (50p) could buy you five pints.

Parents of those too young to drive were not unduly concerned, they would rather pick up those in their care from there, than from some place in Union Street. And by this time word had well and truly got around. The mid-week youth club circuit saw Plymouth College boys mixing with boys and girls from other schools and suddenly ‘the Club’ was the place to go, especially at the weekend and on high days and holidays – Easter, Christmas, New Year’s Eve. Queues would form outside as young non-OPMs would wait to be signed in by members.

OPM Clubhouse 1983

Positive growth.

Lorem Ipsum The rugby teams were no longer top heavy with OPMs and staff members, the world had moved on and the club was struggling. In 1987, after dwindling returns we managed, largely through the excellent work of Ed Keast, to sell the club and its surroundings with planning consent for future development.

For the next 15 years or so, we looked for a suitable alternative, ever mindful of the fact that there would be different demands on any new venture. Plymouth Cricket Club, the Corinthian Yacht Club, the Mayflower Sailing Club and the Fairfield Hotel off Mutley Plain.

Everything was going swimmingly when the committee decided that the venue would benefit from being even bigger and so at some point around 1980 a programme of expansion saw the club double in size. Unfortunately however this had the effect of halving the atmosphere. It wasn’t helped by the fact that there was now a lot more late-night licence competition and many more eating out venues around town, not that Edna’s burgers and chips could ever have been considered fine dining. And so in order to attract punters at certain times there would be curry nights, or French or Italian evenings. Discos were popular and live bands too and increasingly the venue was booked out for weddings and works dos. But the heydays had passed, drink driving regulations had become much tighter, Frank Jeffery, deputy headmaster, had joined the committee and become a particularly strict presence on the door for ‘big events’ making sure no underage schoolchildren were able to sneak in when he was around.

The rugby teams were no longer top heavy with OPMs and staff members, the world had moved on and the club was struggling. In 1987, after dwindling returns we managed, largely through the excellent work of Ed Keast, to sell the club and its surroundings with planning consent for future development. A deal was struck with Bill Hitchins about providing alternative playing fields and the OPM Club moved out of Efford with a very healthy bank balance.

And then, much closer to home, or at least, closer to our spiritual home at Ford Park, the Christian Science Reading Rooms were put on the open market. We had the property valued at a price of around £220,000, which was close to the asking price, but the committee submitted a bid of £110,000. The offer was rejected. The property was taken off the market. It was sold subsequently for around £330,000. The purchaser then managed to get planning consent for a large development on the site and sold to McCarthy and Stone for around £1.3 million. An opportunity missed?

A year or two later a discussion with the Bursar, Gordon Mills, at Speech Day raised the possibility of getting into bed with the school even more cosily with the idea of building an OPM facility onto the Sports Hall development. While this proved unworkable a subsequent suggestion to suit both sides was the idea of creating new music rooms on the side of the Meade-King Hall, with an OPM facility above. A facility that would offer wonderful views across the city and back across to the grand Victorian limestone pile we call the Main School building. One of the prominent pioneers of the original OPM Club at Efford led a rather vocal but ultimately poorly supported opposition campaign. And so it was that in 2004 our new OPM Suite opened overlooking the cricket square.

Despite many successful functions, dinners, parties and other events the venue has never worked as a day to day social facility, and in many respects, notably from a school perspective, that has probably been a good thing. With the departure in recent years of the rugby section and the hockey teams, the facility has struggled, post covid, to be any more than an occasional social venue and so it was relatively convenient for the club when the school found itself needing to divest itself of the OPM interest in order to complete their sale to the Global Galaxy Education Group.

The ever increasing impact of Social Media, the spread of What’s App groups and the fact that there are so many ways to spend time that weren’t available to young people 20, 40 or 60 years ago ‒ many of which no longer feature the drinking culture that dominated previous generations ‒ have meant that this is a good time for the OPM body to take stock and consider what might be the best next move to carry the Club on in a meaningful way well into the 21st century.