How iconic Cornwall nightclub became the heart of 'Britain's Ibiza' during the '90s

Tall Trees nightclub was one of Newquay's top nightclubs during the 1990s, attracting partygoers from across the country when the resort was dubbed 'Britain's Ibiza'.

The club, located on Tolcarne Road, is one of the oldest venues in the town and has operated for more than 50 years. Now a cabaret bar, for more than a decade, starting in the early '80s, Tall Trees enjoyed unparalleled success.

It was the number one nightclub destination in Newquay, and one of the best in the South West. It was the leading light in a town which was once the busiest nightlife resorts in the country.

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At its peak, the club would attract 1,100 partygoers every Saturday for the entire summer season. It was open six nights a week, attracting the biggest DJs around. In those days, Tall Trees was operated by St Austell boy James Gatheridge, who bought the club for around £250,000 in October 1982 after selling his building business.

Reminiscing about the good old days, James was taken aback by memories of how "utterly insane" it all was during a conversation with us in 2018. "It's hard to imagine now, and hard to explain, what it was like," he said. "But I'll give it my best shot."

The 1980s were heady days, but for James the 1990s were the zenith of the Newquay nightlife scene. "Newquay was the party town in the UK," he said. "It really began to hit the top bracket in the late '80s, and in the later part of the '90s it started to go off a little bit."

"In the summer time back then, Newquay had a club capacity of seven to eight thousand people. That was the amount of people that were coming to Newquay. And it was for the entire summer. The whole place rocked. Nowadays people come down for the weekend, but back then people would come down for a whole week."

"Newquay was the UK Ibiza at that time. That's why I had a dedicated dance floor on the middle floor. Or should I say, a dedicated sweat box." Tall Trees became so successful that in 1998, it was voted number one club in the South West by Ministry of Sound magazine.

At times, the rivalry between Newquay's big three clubs, Trees, Sailors and Berties, was fierce. "Jack, who ran Sailors, and Richard from Berties, we were the best of pals but the biggest enemies that ever walked. We would do each other down at the drop of a hat business wise."

So what was he making in a single night? "My lips are sealed on that," James says. "But Trees ran at its full 1,100 capacity every Saturday night for years and years, and it didn't stop. It was the place to go for about 15 years."

"On Saturday night I used to run buses from all over Cornwall which would get in at about 9.45pm, and you'd have 300 people coming in on the buses alone. By 10pm, Trees was bouncing."

"We used to do a laser show demo at ten, and you'd have people outside crying if they couldn't get in for ten because they'd miss the show." From the second week of June, when we had the Miss Newquay competition, we opened six nights a week right through until the second week of September.

"If they [the revellers] knew what they were doing in Newquay, they would go to Trees. Being out of the town, Trees operated on reputation."

"Trees always had the advantage of having three clubs inside, and three types of music. If you wanted to listen to RnB you went downstairs, dance was the middle club, if you wanted chart, you went to the top club."

"Dance music was massive. The big thing in the summer was Radio 1. I had all the Radio 1 DJ's on contract so nobody else in Cornwall could get them. They were locked down."

James says he had an agreement with an agency so Tall Trees became known as their home in the South West. "I had all the biggies; Steve Wright, DLT [Dave Lee Travis], you name them," he said. "The Radio 1 shows always used to be on a Monday or Thursday night from the first week of July to the end of August."

"I managed to con out of the council 2am licensing on the nights I brought entertainment in. I explained that if I flew the big DJs down from London at 9pm, by the time I get them to the hotel and sorted, we're talking 11.30pm for a two-hour show. And I have to shut at 1am. I can't afford to bring them down and pay all this money and then they can't do the full show."

The first time James brought in DLT, the club opened at 8.30pm, but just 40 minutes later Trees was full. But James had a little trick up his sleeve.

"The queue went up to where Tolcarne Mews is now. That night I had Blue Lagoon [his flume and pool complex on Cliff Road] open, which had the 800-capacity Disco 5000 inside. So I rang my guys up there and said, 'We're full, get your doors open and we'll send them up to you. We can't take no more'. And we sent some staff up."

"We went through the queue and told them we're full but that Disco 5000 was open, the doors are open especially for you. The queue turned around, walked up and the road was on lockdown. So when DLT arrived that night at Trees I told him what happened and, said, 'Any chance you can just go in for ten minutes and show your face?'"

"And he said, 'I'll do more than that'. So he went into Disco 5000 and did 45 minutes and then came back for his set in Trees, which we cut by 15 minutes."

"The publicity I got out of that was just off the chart. The next day he did his Radio 1 show and said how he flew down to Cornwall for the night and that we put on a second club because it was full, and how he had a fantastic night. He says, 'A big shout out to Newquay and I can't wait to come back again'."

Tall Trees also became the first nightclub in the South West to use multi-beam laser lights for advertisement. "That made me an absolute fortune," James said. "I had a set-up so the laser would jump off the mirror and up into the roof space. Then it would bounce out through a hole in the back wall and right over the top of the town. That would never be allowed now."

"There were five beams shooting over the top, and it was funny because the fishermen always said, 'We know when we're getting near home because you see the laser lights'. They would curve with the curvature of the earth miles out to sea. It said, 'Trees is open tonight'."

"It frightened the s*** out of the police inspector the first night we turned them on. His office was that side of the town, and when we turned them on, one of the beams went straight through his window."

Another trick James introduced to Tall Trees was a foam machine, which gushed the patrons with soapy foam from a cannon. During the winter months, he would tour the country to visit the top nightclubs in the big cities so he could stay in touch with new trends in music and equipment.

"I would come back with a view of what I was going to do for the summer. Every Easter I had a refit to give people a brand new perspective of the club. You have go to keep the interest; it's like a snowball, you've just got to keep it rolling."

Nowadays, new laws, changes to licensing and tougher policing make it difficult for under-age revellers to hit the clubs. But back in the 90s, it was much easier to get in.

"Age checks were done, but they weren't done to the extent they are done now," James said. "There was no technology. And if somebody had a fake ID, they were brought through."

"Then we had things like the 'Miss Wet T-shirt' competition. You wouldn't be able to do that anymore. I'd be hung, drawn and quartered now."

One of the reasons Tall Trees was so busy was because it could attract a higher percentage of females that the other clubs in Newquay, James says.

"It was known as the place where females would go. If we were contacted by a hen party group and they provided proof that it really was a hen party, we'd send them complimentary tickets."

For 15 years, it was all going so well. But at one point, James made a very costly business decision. In 1988, he transformed the Blue Lagoon dance hall and discotheque on Cliff Road into a flumes and fun pool complex with a bowling alley, bars and disco, at a cost of over £3 million.

He said: "I had this great vision and built the swimming pool, and I don't want to think about that. It cost me £3million and put me to the wall."

"It was Blue Lagoon that took me out, Tall Trees didn't go bankrupt. I stepped away from ownership of Tall Trees for about 18 months, but I put together a new company with new backers and recovered."

At one stage, James was also taken to court over noise issues by what was then Cornwall County Council. To solve the problem, he hired a team of detectives.

"We had problems with people complaining about noise going up the road," he said. "The council was trying to mess my licence around, so I employed detectives who were ex-police officers."

"It cost me a fortune, but I retained my licence and made the council look like idiots. I also made it into a national magazine for the most innovative operation of keeping people quite when they leave the clubs. We gave them all a lollipop to suck when they walked up the road!"

By the early part of the 2000s, James could see a decline in the nighttime economy in Newquay. After the summer season of 2001, he warned his fellow directors that things were about to get tough.

"Just be prepared, I told them. And at the end of the 2002 season I hit them straight in the head and said, 'time to go, get out, and put it on the market'. I said I'd had enough, it cost me two divorces and much more. I said I can hold it at the top for another year, but it will be at the cost of the bottom line."

For James, there wasn't one single reason for the decline of the nightlife scene. "It's hard to put your finger on exactly what it was, but in 2002 I saw that the light was on the wall," he says.

He added: "There was the extended licensing that came in, where pubs could get later licenses and the nightclubs went to 4am. I think that is the worst thing that could have happened, ever. I think it killed the industry."

"Let's take Central as being the main bar in Newquay, people could stay there until 1am, walk in for free and drink cheaper alcohol. By the time they were kicked out, they weren't going to go and pay to go in a nightclub for another few hours. That was major, major factor."

"And the local authorities wanted to cut the nighttime economy because of the yobs. There was a big clamp down on the rules, like ID."

"Then there was the changing music scene, and people don't come down for a whole week anymore, it's just the weekend. If you mold all that into one, that's what killed it. But they have killed off the nightclub scene and they haven't been able to bring it back."

"Back then you had Trees, Fosters, Disco 5000, Steamers, Berties, Sailors, Koola, Walkabout and Red Square. Now it's basically just Sailors, and Berties in the summer. It's all about the bar scene."

"Now, if you said to me, 'If I give you £5 million to go in that town and build a super club, can you guarantee that I will pull my money back and that the place will be bouncing', I would say, 'you want your brains tested'. But a bar, that might be different."

In 2003, James sold Tall Tress for £1 million. But just as he had predicted, the decline continued and eventually, in 2008, the club folded. In 2009 it was bought and relaunched as Pure, before later reopening under its original name, but it failed to hit the heights of previous years.

"When I sold Tall Trees, the guy who bought it from me worked behind the scenes with me for a month before he took it over," James recalls. "He wanted me to work as a consultant with him for the summer season, about after working with me for a month behind the scenes he said, 'I think I've got it all'."

"I was thinking, I've been here 22 years and I still don't know it all. You have to understand the operation of a nightclub and what is good this year may not be good next year."

"In Trees, I took the '70s DJ out of the box on the bottom floor and created a dedicated R'n'B floor. I put him on the door. They said I was mad, but I had to do it."

Looking back now, James says he wouldn't swap his experiences for anything. He says, with a smile: "It was mad. You look back, and it was absolutely, utterly mad. Insane."

So does he miss the good old days? Would he do it all again? "Yes," he says. "I wouldn't like to have to go back and do it at my age now, but I'd love to go back to 1982 and do it all again. Now, it would bloody kill me."

This article was first published in 2018.