Butlins american pool tables

[Geoff Large]

Been to butlins this week to put back 6 american pool tables that we dismantle every year to make way for a 18 to 30s bash disco where they take £000s over the bar , they use the pool room Area for this , one month later we come back to reassemble the tables and recover them ready for the next 11 months , this my 5th time of doing this now , they had a new carpet down this time which held me up by 1 day and I had to work Saturday to make the time up .
the Brunswick 9ft tables are past their sell by date , but they still have them recovered




another Pool table a 7ft sam Bison that we had hanging around the wharehouse without any coin mech so we free played it and sold it to a client near mansfield .

[bricktip]

Were you ever involved in maintaining the snooker tables when they used to have what seemed like hundreds back in the day?

[Geoff Large]

Were you ever involved in maintaining the snooker tables when they used to have what seemed like hundreds back in the day?

We where offered the job in the 70s and 80s by the old firm ( Rank ) that used to own Butlins , BUT it was their policy to only pay for the work at the end of each holiday season , so you would have to go in say in Jan /Febuary to recover them and get paid for the job in november /december , now they did have a lot of tables back then around 40 I think so a large outlay in materials and labour and 3 to 4 weeks of work for two fitters .
So we declined to do the work on the basis that they could go bust by the end of the season and we end up with nothing , don't forget back in the 70s and 80s Butlins where not doing so well with the Air flights now being cheap and good weather and low cost holidays in spain etc .

Later on in the 80s I had to take some tables out of bogner Regis camp as it was reduceing it's snooker tables we bought all the steel block B&watts ones , everthing that was to be down sized was auctioned off . that could have happend to Skegness I am sure that they also had around 40 tables at one time also , but in the end Bourne Liesure bought out Butlins remaining camps in the year 2000 and now opperate it along with other holiday locations around the UK not only butlins but many under their own name .
They are a good firm to contract to , they always pay on time and we have an excellent working partnership with them for over 5 years they know they can rely on us to do the work in the correct manor in the correct time space and they run a tight ship on when we can do the work as they have shut down weeks where only contractors are on site , at skegness they have 6 x 9ft american Pool tables and around 22 Full size snooker tables , I am due to go back in Febuarey to do some work in the snooker Hall , snooker is one of only a few things at Skegness butlins that is Free , the American pool and Bowling you have to pay for ontop of youre holiday , gone are the days when everything was Free at Butlins .
today butlins is marketed on theme weeks and weekends such as mowtown weekend or this week at skegness it is Folk music weekend with 3000 people attending , you also get rock weekends , soul weekends , 60s and 70s weekends . 80s weekends , and the 18 to 30s which is the time we take the pool tables down and store them on site for 3 to 4 weeks before they are put back up and recoevered , we do this every year . those 18 to 30s do most of the damage at butlins but they must make money out of them or they would not do it .
now and a again post cards come up for sale on ebay showing the snooker room at bognor Regis or skegness and Minehead , there looks from the photo's like there are hundreds of tables .

what you have to remember at Skegness Butlins is the snooker tables are Free to play and they get hammered week in week out , so don.t expect good looked after tables unless they have just been recovered , the wood work always look rough on these tables , we do recomend now and again for tables to be replaced with a more modern S/hand table , but as always Budgets get spent on other things like decorating refitting the challets or new Carpets or TV's etc , the tables are always last on the list , as long as they can be played on they will remain as they are .
Have alook at the Photo underneath , the table has no nap and the cloth is very worn out , this is the norm , unless the table is torn or it looks realy bad they are not recovered .Remember it's free to play at skegness , at minehead I think they only have 3 snooker tables now , the rest are 9ft american pool tables around 15 of them . I have not been to Bogner recently so have no idea of the amount of tables they still have .
Minehead in the 60s

Skegness in the 60s

[tornado taylor]

Wow thanks for the old pics.. Brings back some memories when they had loads of tables. Bognor only has 1 table which is better than the ones at minehead. We go every year to butlins, minehead and I do miss my snooker within that week we are there. Its a shame they dont have some decent tables for people like us that want to play instead of just hammering the cr.p out of the balls, cues and rests which all the kids do. No point playing on any of their tables as they are all rubbish. They did have a rileys I think it was called on camp but that went downhill and got made into a laser quest. Shame..

[bricktip]

pic (70).jpg

This is me in the early 80's in Minehead in what looks like the Windsor Games Room. They also had the Beachcomber which was bigger. I reckon they had about 100 tables in total.

[bricktip]

pic (102).jpgand someone who could really play...

[tornado taylor]

Yeah I remember both of those. Had the arcade in the beachbomber one. They had the match table in the windsor and had my picture taken with ray reardon there as he played the winner of the singles champ. The good ol days.

[cally]

Great pics there geoff and bricktips family album pics of hols back in the day are cool. good stuff, love it...

[cally]

Hi Geoff...

I'm sure you said you worked for elston and hopkin in the past.

I have a powerglide cue here with 'elston and hopkin billiards ltd' badge on it, and i just realised it might be the company you work for.

Is it the same company?

[philip in china]

Geoff, I don't know how you worked in the Butlins place without throwing up! What a colour scheme!

[philip in china]

I am proposing to start some snooker based holidays in a place that I own in the Bulgarian countryside. These would not be rattling round old balls on a worn out table but using a couple of good British tables in a "country house" type snooker room. Parties would typically be groups of half a dozen friends. Background activities would be boozing and fishing.

If anybody is interested by all means send me a PM