Nooks and Crannies.........Lewes.................... Winshaw Promotions

I stopped and thought about this one. Is Lewes a Nook and Crannie.

Well for one it is not on the coast and Dale Martins had a huge number of Sussex Seaside towns in their charge.

And also thus far , I have not found Dales operating in Lewes.

When I covered Bexhill on Sea I presented some Winshaw Promotions bills and for sure many of the wrestlers were unknowns.

It was pretty much established that they were a Lewes based promotion and the only other town they seemed to be at was Seaford.

Lewes though , is the epicentre because the Winter family were living there and had a wrestling gym there. It was their venture. Johnny Winter and his younger brother Ricky are credited with being the Promoters , born 1940 and 1943 in Lewes and there were a few sisters too. But Dad John Eric Winter also a Lewes born man 1918 was the secretary , so who knows how many people were involved here. But that local gym no doubt brought through some more wrestlers , some who never made the jump to Joint Promotions.

A lot of these guys had jobs and wrestled as a side line , so fair to assume there was no pressure to wrestle every night.

I can't show all the bills so it's just a taste here. Click for larger image.

It's doubtful that with a ring as well, 350 people could cram into Lewes Town Hall , but for a period of maybe 1964 , Certainly 1965 to 1972 the venture worked. I know from the papers , in the end at the end of 1972 the gate was falling below 200 and that brought the finish.

But today Jason Winter is promoting wrestling at the very same place with a Winshaw Trophy. You will find him on the web.

So Lewes is a very special Nook and Crannie with this unique alternative wrestling with colourful characters in swathes.

The April 1965 bill might have been the first one to really target the public , they had done a show in a school prior to this. Its quite a collection of names to look at in depth. Maybe not to be taken too seriously. I mean "The Mysterons" , can you believe it. The Masked Bear. A Ghoul , and they liked tag wrestling as well.

I have gone through the bills 1965 to 1970 and listed the wrestlers. We get many people coming to Heritage with "My relative was a wrestler" , some times we have not heard of them.

This list might just help. Many of these not in the A-Z.

Part two will present these wrestlers , showing quite a big promotional effort with a few well known names thrown in.