It is over 50 years since the Wheelhouse Club and Coffee Bar opened in the former wartime Bournemouth Food Office at Wootton Mount in the centre of the town.

Set up by the national organisation the Youth Ventures Ltd, the club's aim was 'to provide a coffee bar, dance hall and other facilities designed to attract from the streets young people to whom the ordinary youth club does not appeal'.

The organisation under the chairmanship of Lord Stonham had the actor Tommy Steele, racing driver Stirling Moss and Billy Butlin of the Butlins Holiday camps, on its council of management. It was the fourth club of its type in the country and was funded by the King George Jubilee Trust, Billy Butlin's Charity Account, the Variety Actors' Federation and a grant from the Education Ministry.

A local committee was formed to run the club which included the boxer Dai Dower and youth organiser J.C. Oates.

The club had a roomy coffee bar where hot meals were served, a games room, a girl's hairdressing and beauty culture room and a first class dance hall with stage. The motorcycle section with workshop facilities where they could strip down and repair their machines was popular.

Within weeks of opening its doors in the summer of 1963 the club boasted a membership of about 330 and by the following year had increased to 600.

In 1965 Bournemouth Council took over the Wheelhouse from the Youth Ventures Ltd as it felt there was a 'very real need' for the club to continue. The next year the Number Ten Club opened on the former Wheelhouse Club premise.

Two years later the club reverted back to its original name and invited Frankie Vaughan to the Wheelhouse launch. When he arrived he was hemmed in by hundreds of boys and girls keen to see the popular singer with shouts of 'Give us a song Frankie', which despite the late hour Frankie obliged.

At the same event was the official opening of the club's Grand Prix slot-car racing track by Cllr Alban Adams. He supplied a lot of the material for the 150ft track, full of twists and turns that tested the skills of the car drivers.

In the early 1970s residents fear Wheelhouse Club bikers might be linked to the American cult group Hell's Angels was shown to be unfounded. The club was awarded a shield by the Army Youth team for the most disciplined and enthusiastic of 30 teams of young people from Hampshire and Dorset after doing an assault course at Bovington.

In 1973 a group of boys from the Wheelhouse Club did a 24-hour marathon table football game raising funds for a mobile holiday home for the Parents and Friends Association for the Mentally Handicapped of Bournemouth.

An art workshop experiment by Dorset County Youth Service and run by Wheelhouse Club youth leader Gordon Broome in 1976 gave young people the opportunity to do photography, silk screening, metal sculpture, candle-making, claywork and craft enamelling. It proved popular and became a regular event, although run on a shoe-string budget.

By the mid 1970s the Wheelhouse Club had changed its image to meet the needs of a new generation. The club now catered for a growing number of young people with their first motorbike or scooter and housed a respectable motorcycle group, the Cog and Throttle Club and a newly formed all-girl motorbike club.

It was also a venue where unemployed school-leavers could get together and chill out.

In 1981 the 25-year lease for the Wootton Mount premises ran out and the club was forced to search for a new meeting place. Regular member John Westmoreland commented at the time.

'It is primarily bikers who use the place because of the friendly atmosphere. There is no alcohol, but we are quite content with the pool table, juke box, food and coffee'.

New premises for the club were found in the crypt at St Peter's Church in Bournemouth, and they continued to meet there until the club closed in 1989.

Today former member Nikki Bainton has many happy memories of the Wheelhouse Club,

'It was an ideal place to meet - it was central, had good access and parking, and was secure. You could buy cheap hot food, the hissing boiler was always on for coffee and you could get your bike inside to work on it. They showed films on bikers and occasionally had bands playing there. It was a place for bikers to meet and talk bikes'.

This Saturday there is a reunion for former members and their partners at Boscombe Conservative Club in Haviland Road from 7pm. The free event has a buffet and live band after 9pm. Contact Nikki at nikkibainton@yahoo.com or call her on 07585822296