Legendary Manchester club Sankeys announces its closure

The building it's based in, Beehive Hill, is reportedly being sold to property developers.

Manchester nightclub Sankeys has announced it has closed with immediate effect.

The club wrote on Facebook and Twitter last night (January 12): “As many of you have seen over the last hour over social media we have been forced to close due circumstances completely out of our control. We will be releasing a full statement in the morning to explain what has happened. We love you all and thank you for your amazing and kind words.”

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The Manchester Evening News reports that the club has been forced to close because the building it’s based in, the Beehive Mill, is being sold by its Japanese owners to property developers who want to turn it into apartments.

Tony Hill, managing director of Radius Security, who is understood to have been helping to manage Sankeys for around five months, told the Manchester Evening News that “Sankeys as a brand will live on”.

He added: “We still have a license to continue holding Sankeys events and we might look into another venue. We can’t promise anything but we haven’t written it off altogether. We’re just in a situation where our hands are tied. It’s incredibly sad to see it come away from the venue. Sankeys is legendary. It’s an absolute shame.”

Happy Mondays singer Rowetta is among those sharing their memories of the club on social media using the hashtag #RIPSankeys.

https://twitter.com/Rowetta/status/819641176001282048

The club opened inside Beehive Mill in 1994 and was initially called Sankeys Soap – a nod to the building’s past as a soap factory – before being rebranded Sankeys in 2006. Daft Punk, New Order, Bjork, Moby and The Chemical Brothers have all played sets there over the years.

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Sankeys now runs its own Ibiza-based spin-off and briefly had a New York City outpost too.

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