

The club attracted punks, rockers, goths, metalheads, skaters, moshers and indie kids to its dingy, sweaty labyrinth of rooms for more than 20 years.

A questionable array of dance moves and air guitar skills were laid bare on the spacious dance floors as the smell of Grolsch and fags hung heavy in the air.

Sometimes ear-splittingly loud, the music which pumped from the 8ft tall speaker stacks ranged from metal and thrash to punk and ska but never strayed from the safety of the rock genre.

A Manchester institution, Jilly’s was originally known as Fagins. It opened in the 1970s on Oxford Road and was renamed Jilly’s in 1983, before adding Rockworld to its signage.

Jilly's closed down in 2010

I first set foot in the club in the early 2000s during the halcyon days of underage clubbing. Back then teenagers could walk into a licensed premises unchallenged by simply flashing a doctored NUS card at the bouncer. At the tender age of 16 me and my mates thought we were exceptionally clever when we scraped off the date of birth from our IDs and aged ourselves up three years.

Passing the terrifying doormen, I paid the £5 entrance fee - which felt like a lot of money back then - and descended the stairs towards the main room.

I was greeted by a cacophony of rock music, strobe lighting, a fog of smoke and the unmistakable stench of sweat - it was great. I went back every weekend for years.

Scores of sixth formers and uni students flocked to Jilly’s each weekend to spend their hard earned cash dancing and messing about.

Tattoos, Mohawks, eyeliner, baggy jeans, band t-shirts, sweatbands, wallets on chains, spiked hair and leather were all popular among the regular patrons. But it really didn’t matter who you were - everyone was welcome.

It was populated by people who, in reality, had dull names but at Jilly’s would be known by monikers they had given to themselves such as Spider and Goose.

In the main room, the DJs would spend hours pumping out absolute bangers by Korn, Deftones, Limp Bizkit and Papa Roach.

Classic tunes from Iron Maiden, Metallica and Slayer were regular big hitters in the smaller, dingier back room.

Meanwhile punk hits from Refused, At the Drive In, and Boysetsfire were played wall to wall with ska from Rancid, Mad Caddies and Less Than Jake within the hallowed walls of Room 1.

Years later a fourth room opened up to cater for the inide kids. It was essentially just a mini 42s, but with tinnier mp3s and more PVC.

On Friday nights, the DJs would play half an hour of rap and hip hop at around 1am to give those with misplaced confidence a chance to test out their head spins and kick ups. I once saw a man run up a pillar and flip over like Donald O’Connor in Singin’ In Rain. People really put their back into it at Jilly’s - no wonder sweat literally dripped from the walls.

The booze wasn’t cheap - perhaps because many of the Rockworld patrons chose not to drink in favour of other substances. But no matter what your poison was the overall effect was the same - hold a can of Strongbow, stand in a circle with your mates and headbang, skank or mosh your little heart out.

A sea of dreadlocks would fly past your face during the chorus to Rammstein’s ‘Du Hast’ and Dr Martens would stomp the ground in unison during System of A Down’s ‘Chop Suey!’.

Queues to enter the cavernous, bright orange bathrooms would start early and were controlled by a lady who sat by the sinks in stoic silence.


The toilets were full of strangers who were keen to lend you their eyeliner and plait your hair. In fact the atmosphere was so nice that some people would spend all night in there chatting rubbish.

Next to the cloakroom, which was sometimes used to store actual cloaks, there was a little gift shop. It sold an array of unusual wares, from tarot cards to vampire teeth.

The chaos went on until 7am on Fridays - a closing time which could only be met with the assistance of a sustaining Pot Noodle, sold behind the bar. If you made it to the end you would emerge from the club vampiric, blinking into the morning light in horror.

Perhaps mercifully, photographs from this era are generally of a poor quality, obstructed by thumbs and strobe lighting. Any images were only really suitable for updating your Myspace page with.

The club closed before the advent of high-quality camera phones meaning it was hard to capture the glistening sweat of the bare-chested metalhead populace in high definition. But anyone who ever set foot in Jilly’s will never be able to forget the smells, sounds and sights.


At it’s height Jilly’s was a glorious place. A sanctuary where you could wear a neon leather bodice and wool in your hair without anyone batting an eyelid. Friendships were made and broken there. My best friend even met her husband there.

When the doors finally closed in 2010, owner John Bagnall blamed the smoking ban and competition from new music venues. At the time he told the M.E.N: “We have tried everything over the last few years to change our business but it became clear we had to call it a day.”

Though Manchester still has a thriving alternative scene, fans of face-melting riffs have been missing Rockworld since the day it died. We’ll always have the memories - no matter how hazy.