Graham Nash donates £10k to save Salford Lads Club

Graham Nash was a member of the Salford Lads Club before he began his music career

Musician Graham Nash has donated £10,000 to save an historic Greater Manchester youth centre from closure.

The former Hollies and Crosby, Stills and Nash singer spent his childhood and teenage years in Salford in the 1940s and 50s and was a member of Salford Lads Club.

The club, on Coronation Street, has helped generations of boys and later girls, and needs to raise £250,000 by the end of November to secure its future.

It opened in the city in 1904 and rose to fame after it featured on a Smiths album sleeve.

Nash has contributed to a public fundraiser set up via GoFundMe in the hope it will help prevent the venue from having to close its doors in a matter of weeks.

Laura Slingsby from the club said £250,000 was needed by the end of the November to "secure the future right now".

Salford Lads Club opened in 1904 as a recreational space for boys

The fundraiser, backed by Salford-born Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess, has raised more than £22,000 so far.

The charity behind the club said the rising costs of maintaining the grade-II listed building, as well as a loss of grant funding, had put the venue's future at risk.

Nash, who was born in Blackpool but grew up in Salford, returned to the club in 2016.

During his visit he recalled the stage "where he first sang" and how he learnt to play snooker at the club.

He was also shown his former boys membership card and his name engraved in steel on a wall marking previous members.

The red-brick venue appeared on the sleeve of the Smiths 1986 album, the Queen is Dead, and was visited by a host of famous musicians and footballers from the city in their youth.

It has been described as one of the "last original lads' clubs" in England, having opened as a boys-only recreational space for the children of Salford's dock workers and shopkeepers.