Tall Trees

Tall Trees was a large nightclub and hotel complex in Yarm, North Yorkshire, that became one of the best-known dance music venues in the North East of England during the 1990s and 2000s. The site began life as a country residence before being converted into a hotel in the 1960s, with a nightclub later added to the complex in the 1980s.

By the 1990s, as the UK's superclub scene boomed, Tall Trees had grown into a venue capable of pulling in thousands of clubbers from across the region on a single night, with a listed capacity as high as 7,000 at its peak and later events promoted around the 3,000 mark. It built a reputation as a glamorous night out, welcoming television faces, pop stars and footballers alongside the dancing crowds, and hosted occasions from club nights to New Year's Eve parties and even weddings in its hotel days.

The venue's defining club night was Retro, a monthly house music event launched by DJ Paul Taylor that ran at Tall Trees for around 14 to 16 years and became one of the biggest recurring club nights in the country, regularly attracting thousands of clubbers each month. Big-name DJs played Retro's Saturday sessions over the years, including Boy George, Pete Tong and Carl Cox, while other brands and names associated with the venue included Goodgreef, Kissdafunk, Swedish House Mafia, Paul van Dyk and Eddie Halliwell. Taylor was later joined on the decks by his son Ben Taylor, and DJs such as Mark Thornton also became associated with the club in its later years.

Tall Trees occupied a notable place in UK club culture as one of the North East's flagship superclubs, a Teesside answer to the big-name clubs of the era further south, pulling in crowds who travelled in by the coachload, including a dedicated Tall Trees bus service during the 1990s. Like many superclubs, it struggled as fashions and the clubbing landscape changed through the 2000s, and the hotel owner cited changing tastes when the operation finally closed in 2010. The derelict hotel building stood empty for several years before being destroyed by fire in 2014, and the site where the hotel and nightclub once stood has since been redeveloped as a housing estate.