The Inn On The Park

Name: The Inn On The Park (see also "Heroes")
Location: West Park, St. Helier
Period: Late 1980s/early 1990s 
Fate: Demolished
Regular Tunes: Indie, Rave, Pop.

The Inn On The Park was located opposite the seafront at West Park, just beyond the corner where St. Aubins Road meets Pierson Road. It was a large and impressive old style ballroom building, two storeys tall, with the entrance doors facing across its car park in the direction of the Grand Hotel.
 
The main door was on the right-hand side of the facade, usually manned by the rather short, bald and unimposing Manager who always made a point of flanking himself with two burly and imposing bouncers.

Stepping through the door you would find yourself in a surprisingly small foyer area, with the till immediately to the left-hand side. Directly ahead were the toilets, to the right of which was a small cloakroom.
























To the right of the till were the stairs which lead upwards to the club itself. This is where the TARDIS effect came into play. Reaching the top of the stairs a short passage took you to the right and into a set of double-doors. Once through these doors you were immediately struck by the sheer sense of space and enormity. This was an old fashioned ballroom, designed for old fashioned dancing. The dancefloor stretched almost the entire length of the room in front of you, vastly bigger than any other dancefloor on the island. Bigger even than some local nightclubs themselves. On the right hand side of the dancefloor was a full-size stage, draped with heavy curtains.

 






















Leading down to the dancefloor were a small flight of steps, to the right of which was a tiny bar. Off to the left were a set of stairs leading up to a balcony which stretched the length of the room (the area marked in pink on the plan), from which the DJ operated.

Back at dancefloor level, directly underneath the balcony, were two bars. The first was quite small, not much more than 10 feet wide, looking down the length of the club. The second was the main bar, running much of the length of the left hand wall.

In front of this larger bar was a seating area of fixed chairs and tables, stepped, between which were two sections of stairs leading down to the dancefloor. There were railings running along the front of the seats closest to the dancefloor, making sure the punters approached it in an orderly fashion via the steps.

The big draw to the club for kids around 1989/1990 was the weekly Friday night session, promoted as "Friday Night Live". Queues for these evenings would stretch across the car park, and despite the implication of the name it was just a DJ spinning records from 10.00pm till 1.30am.  The music was a good mix. Acid House and Rave culture was just starting to permeate the local scene, and this combined with the "Baggy" elements of Indie which were to later mutate into Britpop made for a highly danceable evening.....always brought to an uncomfortable halt with Bill Medley's "I've Had The Time Of My Life".

The crowd were almost entirely local kids, the average age would have been about 19. Trouble inside the venue was a rarity, although at closing time you were virtually guaranteed to see at least one fight in the car park.

As Rave culture took more of a hold The Inn On The Park began to focus on promoting all-nighters, dropping "Friday Night Live". Although initially these events were hugely successful, they served to marginalise the customer-base not interested in Raves, and as the Rave fad gradually wound down the club had nothing in place to re-attract the old lost custom or to regain fresh young custom. The Inn On The Park attempted to limp on for a couple of years more by changing direction to host semi-regular performances by tribute bands, but the decline was terminal.

In the late 1990s the venue finally closed down. It was left for a number of years to sit neglected and fall into dereliction before being purchased by a property developer. Despite high-profile public protest permission was granted to demolish the building. A block of multi-million pound flats named West Park Apartments now stands in its place.