THE most popular story the Daily Echo has ever posted online was not a breaking news event.

It was a gallery of pictures showing the history of Poole’s Tower Park – and it has attracted a phenomenal 1.6million page impressions in little more than a week.

The popularity of that feature, devised by Sarah Cartlidge of our digital team and picture desk assistant Michelle Luther, showed just how many memories are already bound up in the relatively short history of Poole’s out-of-town leisure park.

Tower Park was one of the first leisure developments of its kind in Europe.

It was built on 53 acres of heathland outside Poole and was conceived by Bill Riddle, whose company WH White was known locally for running the landfill site off Magna Road.

He sold land at Mannings Heath to Tesco in order to raise the capital for the leisure scheme.

The park opened in 1989 and brought Dorset a host of new leisure venues.

There was a 10-screen UCI cinema, giving the area its first taste of the multiplex experience.

There was a 30-lane bowling alley, the Megabowl, and a skating rink, Ice Trax. There was Splashdown, a water park covering 47,000sqft and whose longest flume ride was 400ft.

And then there was the Venue, a £3million ‘superclub’ which would attract top DJs of the time such as Steve Wright and Bruno Brookes, as well as an up-and-coming band called Take That.

Much of the park – including the Venue – was leased by Allied Leisure PLC, whose chairman and chief executive was Richard Carr.

“Allied Leisure PLC rented over 1.5 acres of space and helped Tower Park become the ‘out of town’ leisure concept which proved to be a national success and was replicated all over the UK,” he wrote in a blog post following the Daily Echo’s online article.

“Allied Leisure’s assets at Tower Park all proved to be landmark leisure assets which many other companies copied.”

Mark Metcalfe was a doorman at the Venue for its first two or three years.

“I think it was billed as the biggest ‘superclub’. Whether Richard Carr named it that himself or whether the media called it that, I don’t know,” he said.

He remembered the club having a capacity of 1,850, with local people mixing with bus loads from Southampton, Portsmouth and Basingstoke, as well as a large military contingent.

“We were involved in a physical incident every single night. It was a tough place to work,” he said.

Tower Park thrived in its early years, with customers attracted by state-of-the-art attractions and free parking.

But the recession of the early 1990s took its toll. Within three years of its opening, administrators were called in to handle the affairs of Tower Park Leisure (Poole), a subsidiary of WH White.

Tower Park Properties came to the rescue, encouraged by the popularity of the Venue, which was frequently named among the top 10 clubs of its kind in Britain. Rank Leisure bought the club for £4.5m in 1994.

Attractions came and went at the park. The closure of Icetrax in the mid-1990s was greeted by protests from skaters. And in 1999, the Venue suddenly closed, with Rank Leisure saying only that it was “no longer a commercially viable option”.

There was an attempt to revive the Venue in 2002, but it has joined the list of popular names that are no longer at the park, along with Ice Trax and the bar Colonnades.

The 21st century brought major new building at the park. Additions included Pizza Hut, Nando’s and KFC, while soft play attraction Lemur Landings took over much of the former Venue site. The former UCI – now an Empire cinema – gained seven extra ‘studio’ screens by taking over another part of the former Venue.

Many who spent a chunk of their youth at Tower Park remember its 1990s incarnation fondly, including some who met future partners there.

Richard Carr remains proud of what it achieved commercially, saying thank you on his blog to “all the people who helped him make this possible” and adding: “Sadly today we are left with nothing that compares with what was achieved 27 years ago, but there is an old saying: ‘Pioneers often get arrows in their back!’”

Mark Metcalfe, who went on to provide ‘close protection’ for the likes of Pippa Middleton and Justin Bieber, recalls a happy working atmosphere among the 30 door staff and 100 others working at the club.

“We all stuck together, we watched out for each other, girls and boys,” he said.

“There are a core of us that are still quite close and when these pictures came out and I reposted them, along with some of the ones I had, Facebook went mad. I’ve got in touch with a few people I didn’t know.”