Club History - Finchley and District Amateur Boxing Club (ABC)

Boxing had been daily routine at the Finchley Amateur Boxing Club for well over 55 years. The origins of one of North London's oldest boxing clubs can be traced back to Northside School Lodge.

In the 1950 the club initially started its training at Northside School Lodge with Finchley N.12.

As more and more boxers joined the club later moved to Christ College Finchley Central.

In those days all equipment and the ring which the committee assembled for all our shows was stored at Northside School.

In February 1978 from information given to us by one of our own boxers, and after a lot of discussion by the committee, we bought our present gym.

The cost was £27,000 covered by a grant from the Department of Education comprising £16,940 from London Borough of Barnet £895 and a bank loan/overdraft guaranteed by Tony Lundy, Dave Spicer and Alan Bartlett.

A Trust had to be formed to obtain grants which was comprised of trustees of then President Les Jones, Solicitor Lionel Lewis, Bank Manager John Hesketh, Treasurer Alan Bartlett.

The gym hall was in a poor state. Fortunately a lot of work was done by Les Jones' demolition company and volunteers.

In Sept 1990 Solicitor Lionel Lewis asked to retire as a trustee. This caused problems as we then lost a valuable contact of Les Jones and John Hesketh. With the help of Steve Leader a solicitor and at no cost the problem was sorted out and a new trust was formed in Feb 2000.

The new trustees were now Graham Kelly, Dave Spicer, Pat Walsh and Alan Bartlett.

In 1993 the roof of the Gym was in a major state of disrepair and needed to be either majorly repaired or replaced. The total cost was going to be £24,000.

So a series of fundraising was undertaken and in 1994 the Milly Althorp Charity gave a grant of £5,000. The committee then decided that whilst doing the roof to refurbish the entire gym.

In December 1996 Milly Althorp Charity increased its grant to £10,000.

Then in November 1997 London Borough of Barnet gave a grant of £2,000

The club applied to the Lottery fund but unfortunately was refused.

Gary Yardley (son-in-law of John Oliver) took over the application for the lottery grant.

In Feb 2001 Sports England grant a of £81,250 with allowable expenditure of £125,000.

In Sept 2002 Sports England gave an additional £43,000 giving a total of £124,500.

Allowable expenditure was now £191,250. In that figure is the cost £10,000 if we had been charged for all of Gary's work. Rest of the money was some £40,000 from club's funds raised during yearly fundraising.

In Sept 2003 the Gym refurbishment was complete nine years after the initial idea.