The club is chaired by Harvey Gibbons, one of the founders of the original club who became known as ‘the Hurricane of Hickling’. He remembers finding one of the tables in bits under a boxing ring in Fleggburgh – and getting it for the bargain price of £50.00. Within a year or so of the club starting up it was in the Yarmouth League and on the way to prizewinning success.

Among the characters Harvey recalls from those days was Fred Shepherd who used to light the stove in the old village hall which the club took over from the Women’s Institute. “Fred only had one arm, and used to rest his cue on a special attachment on his artificial arm, but he was a good player.”

Fred’s stove was one of the reasons why the old club had to close in 2005 – it proved too much of a fire risk for the insurance company, meaning that the hall became too expensive to keep going.

The decision to close the club was taken reluctantly. The tables were dismantled and the parts carefully numbered before being put into storage in a dry barn on the outskirts of Hickling. In October 2011 all the parts of the tables were taken out of long-term storage before being reassembled and re-covered by an expert restorer.