Kimbell's, Osborne Road. 

Clifton Road, 1968.

Clifton Road, off Osborne Road. Kimbell's dance hall is on the right, the front of the building was in Osborne Road. The stage door is at the end, all groups who played there in the 1960's, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Manfred Mann etc, parked their vans in this road and unloaded their equipment through that stage door. The Pomme d'or Club, (Golden Apple Club),

is at the end of the road.

Kimbell’s Ballroom was a popular venue, around 1963/4 the management booked Manfred Mann with some band members from Gosport and the Shamrocks, who came from the Isle of Wight for a weekly residency. I could never afford to get in so would go down Clifton Road where there was a side door into Kimbells and watch the bands unload their gear from their vans. Paul Jones, the Manfred’s singer who’s real surname is Paul A. Pond, was born in Portsmouth on 24 February 1942 and had been educated at Portsmouth Grammar School. For a while he lived at 30, St. Edwards Road when it was a small boarding house run by the Macgregor family for pupils of the School. Paul Pond was a senior boy in the Cathedral choir but he also had musical interests developing in a different direction as could be heard when he rehearsed with a school band in the garage that opened onto Garden Lane. In 1962 Paul joined Alexis Korner’s band as the singer and later joined Manfred Mann, one of the leading R&B groups of the Sixties. In the winter of 1964 their third single release was "5-4-3-2-1" the theme for popular TV programme "Ready, Steady, Go"), Paul Jones was the composer.