Spiders in Hull: Music venue photos display a 'rare gem'

Spiders, pictured here in the 1980s, is still the home of Hull's alternative music scene

Pictures of clubbers at "a rare gem" in a city's "cultural crown jewels" taken more than 25 years ago are to be turned in to a book.

Andy Roe took the photos in Spiders, an independent Hull nightclub renowned for its iconoclastic music policy.

The black and white pictures taken between 1984-90 are a time-capsule of the club's clientele and their clothes.

Mr Roe, an artist who now lives near London, said: "It was much more than a nightclub in a northern town."

"It was about fashion, friendship, beautiful music and being alive among kindred spirits," he said.

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Andy Roe took the pictures at the nightclub when he lived in Hull

Thirty years later the photos have become a glimpse of the people that went to the club

The photos cover six years from the mid 1980s

Hull-born Mr Roe, 51, said when he first re-discovered his photographic hoard of around 100 photos and decided to digitise them, "it had become a bit of a chore but I got into it".

The result in April 2016 was a series of images that were posted on social media.

People began suggesting names of some of those caught on camera, although others remain unidentified, and club-goers from America to New Zealand got in touch with Mr Roe.

He said Spiders - opened in 1979 and still in its original building - was different from a "conventional nightclub, it's miles much more than that".

"It was a galaxy of curiosity and thrills. You don't forget it," he added.

Following a successful crowd-funding appeal, Mr Roe is to produce 2,000 copies of a book featuring his re-discovered pictures.

The pictures show more than just a "northern nightclub" according to Mr Roe

Many subjects are pictured wearing dark-coloured Goth-style clothes

The collection of photos are to be reproduced in a book

The club continues as a music venue