Rusholme & Victoria Park Archive

Roller-skating was sweeping across Britain, and skating rinks were opening in towns and cities throughout the country, including London, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Brighton, Harrogate and Scarborough. By 1910 there were said to be more than 500 roller-skating rinks in Britain. The largest, the Empress Rink at Earls Court, could accommodate around 4,200 skaters.
The new industry was considerable. It employed some 17,000 people, including box-office staff, skating instructors and musicians who provided the live music that accompanied the skaters. Roller-skating even had its own specialist press, with monthly and weekly magazines such as The World of Wheels and Roller Skating Records.
But “rinking” was about much more than simply skating. It was an important social activity, particularly for young men and women. There were skating clubs, competitions, professional performers, orchestras and organised social events. Women could participate as serious skaters as well as for recreation, and skating became associated with fashionable leisurewear, contemporary images show women skating in elaborate Edwardian hats, skirts and coat.

Not all ‘Rinking’ was indoors, the postcard below from Blackpool showing ‘Happy Al-Fresco Skaters’.

I found the picture postcard below on eBay. It had been offered by a dealer in New York, so I was particularly pleased to have it shipped back to Rusholme.

The Olympia Skating Rink was built on the corner of Wilmslow Road and Rusholme Place. The architect was Harry Longworth.
The architectural considerations of a roller-skating rink were quite specific – scanning the web I found some interesting information that have I briefly edited below.
The architectural history of Edwardian roller rinks reflects a time when grand, cavernous buildings were erected at lightning speed to satisfy an overwhelming cultural obsession. Driven by the "rinking craze" of 1908–1912, architects and engineers developed specific spatial, acoustic, and structural strategies to accommodate thousands of skaters sliding across smooth floors simultaneously.
The absolute primary requirement of a roller rink was an open, pillarless expanse. Columns were dangerous obstacles for fast-moving skaters, forcing architects to look toward advanced industrial design for answers. To bridge massive gaps without central supports, builders relied on wide steel or corrugated iron frames. This engineered framework distributed the roof’s weight entirely to the exterior walls, allowing wide spans that averaged anywhere from 75 to 115 feet across. Most rinks featured airy, cavernous interiors capped by magnificent barrel-vaulted or arched timber and steel roofs. These monumental dimensions created an intense sense of civic grandeur upon entry. Provision around the rink was made for spectators together with other facilities for an orchestra, tea rooms etc.

Map above is courtesy of Manchester Central Library Archives.

The first evidence I have found of the proposed rink appeared in the Manchester Evening News on 30 January 1909. An announcement stated that the largest and most up-to-date roller-skating rink outside London was to be erected opposite Whitworth Park. The announcement also stated:
“Prospectuses will be ready shortly and may be obtained from the registered office of the company.”

The proposed investment was substantial. The cost of the project was £12,000, a very considerable sum in 1909.
For comparison, the website Measuring Worth gives a number of different ways of expressing the equivalent value today. Depending upon the measure used, £12,000 in 1909 could represent anything from approximately £1.76 million by an inflation-based calculation to considerably more—potentially as much as £17.8 million—using other measures of economic value. The precise modern equivalent is less important than the fact that this was a substantial commercial undertaking.

On the 4th March 1909 the Manchester Evening News carried an interesting report about an application for a licence for music and dancing – one of the magistrates expressed concern about the risk of injury!

Below is the text from the hearing;
“Mr. E. C. Burgis, barrister-at-law, applied to the City Licensing Justices, to-day, for a music and dancing licence in respect of the new Olympia Skating Rink, Oxford Road. It was not, said counsel, intended to use the premises for dancing in the ordinary way, and the licence was only applied for because it was proposed to have music to accompany the skating. The rink was situated opposite to Whitworth Park on a site which had cost £3,000. A building had been erected at a cost of £3,000, and there was a skating area of 3,000 square yards. The temporary building which had been put up would be replaced by a permanent, structure, and the reason the temporary building had been erected was to enable the directors to take advantage of the present boom in skating. He believed the rink would be the largest of its kind in England. The Chairman (Sir Thomas Shann): Shall you be ready for Saturday? Mr. Burgis: Yes; we are ready now, I understand. The Chairman: You think a little music when a man falls down will do him good? Mr. Burgis: Yes; but we don't think they will fall down. The Chairman: I don't know, they tell me roller skating is filling all the beds at the Infirmary. Mr. Burgis: I am sure we should send a subscription with all our patients. Mr. Cobbett (who is chairman of the Royal Infirmary Board)! I was not aware of it, but I will inquire. _ In reply to the chairman, Mr. Burgis said there were seven means of exit each 12ft. wide. The Chairman: Of course, there is no drinking licence? Mr. Burgis: No. The Chairman said the licence would be granted, to be in force from ten o'clock in the morning till ten o'clock at night. The magistrates declined to extend the hours of opening until eleven o'clock at night.

By 24 March 1909, the Manchester Evening News was advertising the rink and giving an indication of both the range of facilities and the cost of admission.

The Olympia was clearly intended to offer much more than somewhere simply to hire a pair of skates. It was part of the rapidly developing commercial world of organised leisure, in which skating, music, socialising and fashionable entertainment all came together.
Barely two weeks later, on 3 April, another notice in the Manchester Evening News offered:
“Instructions at moderate charges by special experts, mornings and afternoon only.”
The arrival of professional instruction is interesting. Skating was not necessarily something that everyone could simply do immediately, and the ability to skate proficiently had itself become a marketable skill.
There was, however, another industry that developed alongside the skating rinks: the picture postcard.
The postcard below was one of several versions produced in 1909 using professional models to portray the antics of roller skating at the rink.

The quotation on the postcard is presumably spoken by the young woman being helped to her feet: “Everyone is so nice and jolly here.”
Another postcard carries a rather more practical warning under the heading, Hints to Skaters. “Don’t stop too suddenly, it’s dangerous.”

Other cards concentrated on the more romantic side of skating.

Some of these images perhaps tell us as much about how skating was being marketed as they do about what actually happened on the rink. The young, fashionable and slightly flirtatious image of roller skating was clearly part of its appeal.

The Manchester Courier also reported on the Olympia. The following extract is from 20 May 1909.

The complete newspaper note is reproduced below the extract.

By this point it is clear that the Olympia was firmly established within the rapidly expanding local skating scene.
Indeed, only a few months after the April advertisement, I found a fascinating listing in the Manchester Evening News of 14 October 1909. Seven roller-skating rinks were listed.
Among them were the Imperial in nearby Ardwick and, even closer to Rusholme, the College Rink at the University.

The appearance of seven rinks in the same newspaper is a useful indication of just how rapidly the craze had developed. What had begun as a new form of fashionable entertainment was becoming a competitive business.

The notice below was in the Music Hall and Theatre Review 26th Jan 1911.

One question that immediately arises when looking at the contemporary advertisements is who could afford to take part.
The price of admission, together with the cost of buying or hiring skates, raises an interesting question about the social composition of the skating audience.

Were the prices within the means of the working classes, or was organised skating primarily a middle-class leisure activity? The evidence in these advertisements provides some clues, but I think it is better to leave the question open until more evidence can be found.

The Manchester Evening News continued to carry advertisements and notices during 1911. An interesting photo below!

*And the popularity of skating was reflected in the postcard trade.
Bamforth were among the most popular publishers of comic postcards, and the following four cards provide a particularly good illustration of the way in which roller skating had entered popular culture. Perhaps the Chairman of the Magistrates had been looking at postcards?

The most intriguing part of the story is how quickly the craze seems to have disappeared. The decline of “rinking” appears to have been remarkably abrupt. The Olympia in Rusholme eventually called a creditors’ meeting in early 1913, but it must have ceased operating considerably earlier. I found the following notice in the Manchester Evening News, dated 3 January 1912.

The contents of the sale are revealing. Among the stock were 600 pairs of skates!.

Six hundred pairs is a remarkable number and gives some idea of the scale of the Olympia's operation. It also provides a rather poignant indication of how quickly the demand for roller skating had collapsed: equipment that had been essential to a fashionable new pastime was now being disposed of.

The rapid decline in “rinking” was not confined to Rusholme. The roller-skating boom appears to have fallen away nationally. One possible explanation is the growing popularity of cinema. At the beginning of the period, moving pictures were still a relatively new form of entertainment. But between about 1905 and 1910 the “cinema boom” was gathering pace. Permanent premises devoted to showing films were appearing in increasing numbers, and the development of films as dramatic and factual entertainment was proceeding rapidly.
The Cinematograph Act of 1909 introduced licensing of cinemas, partly in response to concerns about fire safety. This also helped to establish the cinema as a recognised form of permanent entertainment.
Between 1910 and 1914 there was a rapid expansion of both purpose-built and converted cinemas, and cinema-going was becoming a regular form of entertainment for a large section of the population. By 1914 London had 500 cinemas.
It would be too simple, however, to conclude that cinema alone caused the collapse of rinking. There were almost certainly a number of factors involved, and the evidence I have found so far does not establish which was the principal cause. But in Rusholme there is a particularly interesting coincidence. Cinema competition arrived locally in 1911, when the Rusholme Electric Cinema opened—and it was just across the road from the Olympia.

Then, only a year later, in 1912, the Trocadero cinema opened, again only a short distance along Wilmslow Road.

The timing is certainly striking. Within only a few years, Rusholme had seen the arrival, rapid growth and apparent collapse of a major roller-skating rink, while at almost exactly the same time the cinema was developing into a new and increasingly popular form of mass entertainment.
Whether cinema actually killed off ' rinking' in Rusholme is difficult to prove. What we can say is that the two forms of entertainment overlapped for a short period, and that by 1912 the balance was changing dramatically.

Perhaps the best way to close the story of “Rinking in Rusholme” is with another comic postcard.

It seems to capture something of the memory that many people must have had of roller skating: the excitement, the falls, the embarrassment and, above all, the fun. The Olympia had been part of a remarkable Edwardian craze that swept across Britain in only a few years.
In Rusholme, however, the evidence survives—in newspaper advertisements, photographs, postcards, advertisements for lessons, lists of competing rinks and, finally, the extraordinary sale of 600 pairs of skates.
For a brief period, roller skating had been one of the fashionable entertainments of Wilmslow Road, Then, almost as quickly as it had arrived, 'rinking' disappeared.