| AdminHistory | The ‘Silver Blades’ Ice Rink on Queens Road, Sheffield opened on 30th November 1965. The rink opened with two skating clubs, the Sheffield and Hallamshire Ice Dance and Figure Skating Club, and the Sheffield Post Office Sports Club. Later a Silver Blades Children’s Club was started up there. In 1975, the Sheffield Ice Hockey Club was founded at the rink.
The formation of the Sheffield Ice Hockey Club led to the emergence of Sheffield's first ice hockey teams: the Sheffield Lancers, and a "second team" the Sheffield Knights, both established in 1975 and based at the Queens Road rink. In 1979, the Sheffield Ice Hockey Club formed a third team, the Sheffield Saracens. In 1980, the Sheffield Lancers relocated to Nottingham and became the reformed Nottingham Panthers (a club which had been disbanded in 1960). With Sheffield having lost its premier ice hockey team the Lancers, in 1980 the remaining Sheffield Ice Hockey Club members and players regrouped and renamed their teams: the Sheffield Sabres and the Sheffield Rapiers. The second team, the Rapiers, were mainly a training group for the Sabres and ultimately ended up becoming the junior team. In 1986, an under-21 ice hockey team the Sheffield Scimitars was formed (which later became a senior team in the mid-1990s). By the late-1990s, the Sheffield Ice Hockey Club also had an under-19 team (the Steelhawks), a ladies team (the Shadows) and various junior teams for different age groups ranging from under-10s through to under-16s.
By the late-1980s, the old Silver Blades Ice Rink had fallen into financial difficulties and the then owners Rank Company closed it in April 1991. Soon after its closure, Icesport Management Services Ltd, a company spearheaded by two local businessmen and ice skating enthusiasts (who had been longstanding members of skating clubs based at the Queens Road ice rink), Cecil Gifford Macintosh (1920 - 2002) and Thomas William Shipstone (1932 - 2018), with the backing of Sheffield City Council, persuaded Rank to let them re-open the rink and secured a lease to run it. The rink was consequently relaunched as ‘Sheffield Ice Sports Centre’. Local newspapers reported how Macintosh and Shipstone both "put their homes and savings on the line" to keep the ice rink open to the public in Sheffield (see the Sheffield Telegraph, 4 Feb 1994, p. 36). The aim of the newly-formed Sheffield Ice Sports Centre was to promote various types of skating "as a healthy form of exercise for any age", including figure skating, free skating, ice dancing, speed skating and ice hockey.
Cecil G. Macintosh and Thomas W. Shipstone were both directors of Icesport Management Services Ltd which ran the Sheffield Ice Sports Centre with Shipstone serving as chairman of the company and Macintosh as secretary. The ice rink manager was Steven Scott.
Born in Nottingham in February 1932, Thomas William Shipstone, known as Tom, worked as a pharmacist most of his career. Tom qualified as a pharmacist in Leicester in 1956 where he met his wife, fellow pharmacist Sheila (nee Staniforth). The couple married in Sheffield in 1956. After a year working at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, Tom spent two years in retail before buying shop premises in north Sheffield which he converted into a pharmacy. Together with his wife Sheila, Tom later owned the Burgoyne Medical Centre and the Walkley Medical Centre in Sheffield. Tom was also a member of the Sheffield Pharmaceutical Committee and became chairman of the Sheffield Community Health Council. Whilst serving as director (and later managing director) of Icesport Management Services Ltd, Tom lived at Thurlstone. Before taking on the running of the Queens Road ice rink with Icesport Management Services Ltd, Tom had previously served for many years as chairman of the Sheffield and Hallamshire Ice Dance and Figure Skating Club which was based at the old Silver Blades Ice Rink where he organised multiple ice dance competitions. He was also a founder member of the Sheffield Ice Hockey Club. He held qualifications in ice hockey coaching, ice dancing and ice skating teaching. In 1980, Tom became coach of the Sheffield Rapiers ice hockey team (which was in effect a training group for the Sheffield Sabres ice hockey team, coached by Jim McGarrigle).
Cecil Gifford Macintosh, known as "Mac", was born in Scotland in June 1920. He married Margaret Peat in Sheffield in 1952. He was a former Rotherham town planner and a qualified ice hockey coach. Mac was the original founder of Icesport Management Services Ltd which he set up in the late 1980s alongside a Canadian ice hockey fanatic Larry Macneil (who was a former player with the Sheffield Sabres ice hockey team). Mac's original intention with the formation of Icesport Management Services Ltd was to build and run an ice rink in Rotherham but this project was abandoned due to lack of financial support. The company later investigated the feasibility of running an ice rink which was to be built as part of the Don Valley sports complex for the 1991 World Student Games before the opportunity arose to take over the old Silver Blades Ice Rink on Queens Road. Whilst serving as a director of Icesport Management Services Ltd, Mac lived at Treherne Road, Rotherham. Mac was a founder and member of the Sheffield and Hallamshire Ice Dance and Figure Skating Club (based at the old Silver Blades Ice Rink) and a longstanding secretary of the Sheffield Ice Hockey Club.
The opening of 'Ice Sheffield' in 2003, situated on Coleridge Road in the Lower Don Valley area of Sheffield, a new lottery-funded ice arena (comprising two Olympic-size ice rinks with seating for 1,500 people), which was built at a cost of £15 million, led to a decline in use of the old ice rink on Queens Road and prompted its sale by Icesport Management Services Ltd. At the end of 2003, the Queens Road rink was purchased by a sports management company In-Line UK with a view to retaining the ice rink but converting it into a multi-purpose sports and entertainment venue.
In the summer of 2005, the venue became a roller skating arena with plans to resume ice skating in the winter months. Ultimately, in the face of competition from the larger and better-resourced Ice Sheffield arena, it proved unsustainable to continue ice skating at the Queens Road rink. |
| CustodialHistory | These records were donated to Sheffield City Archives in Jul 2019 by the daughter of the former managing director of Icesport Management Services Ltd which ran the Sheffield Ice Sports Centre on Queens Road from 1991 - 2003 |