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History

In May 1929 the club members took an existing facility from outside the Nobel's Ardeer factory boundary and moved to its present home. Thus joining with the then, newly opened Ardeer Recreation Club at Town Head Street Stevenston. This was to be the workers social and recreation club of the then flourishing Nobel’s Explosives Factory at the Ardeer peninsula and later to be known as Imperial Chemicals Indstries (ICI). Old town maps of 1895 show a shooting range along the line of Caledondia Road with the stop butt at 600 yards. The bottom end of Stevenston has changed a great deal over the years resulting in the lie of the old range no longer being visible, except for the stop butt which is still there today, within the boundary fence of the Black Powder plant in Nobel's Ardeer Factory. The shooting Club was only one activity for a very active recreation club, which could boast social facilities with extensive bars and lounges, ballroom dancing on one of Scotland's largest dance floors, tennis, athletics, gardening, boxing, model engineering, amateur radio, squash, bowls, snooker, football, badminton, cricket, fencing, weight lifting, army cadet unit, net ball, basket ball, hockey and many others, all of which were encouraged to strive for excellence including international participation where appropriate.The hay days of nearly 13, 000 of a work force at Nobel’s Explosives Industries no longer exist, a result of the ravages of a changing world and progress, alas the Recreation Club like Nobel's at Ardeer no longer exists, only the bowls club and the shooting club survive today.Back in those pre war days records show that the club had a membership large enough to have a Saturday shoot for around 250 of its members. Back in those days the potential membership was that of the Nobel work force which was still around 3000 in the middle 60's.It was perhaps fortunate that not all were interested in the sport of target shooting.Today membership is around 20.The club has always had members that were competitive shooters, and we have accumulated no less than 64 individuals that have brought honour to the club and the town of Stevenston, by being selected to shoot for Scotland and some of them for Great Britain. Today's club still has 4 internationalists among its members, with 2 members currently in the the Great Britain Team. Since 1929 no less than 64 honoured members have shot a host of different events, that include, small-bore rifle, full-bore rifle, air rifle, air pistol, small-bore pistol, full-bore pistol, and in more recent times muzzle loading pistols (Black Powder) perhaps we have come full circle at Ardeer.

ARDEER RIFLE & PISTOL CLUB

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