Ishinryu Karate at Woodlane
Ishinryu training has taken place in the Woodlane Dojo since the mid 1970's. Wood Lane is based in Dagenham on the East London / Essex border and comes under the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.
The first Ishinryu club was established by Ishinryu founder Ticky Donovan in Dagenham in 1973. This was on the same site as the current Wood Lane sports Centre (built in 1982) and Karate training was undertaken in Nissan huts. A number of karate legends trained under Ticky Donovan at Woodlane in the early days including Peter Dennis, Will Verner, and Tyrone White - all of whom went on to run their own Ishinryu clubs. After some years sensei Donovan handed over the running of Woodlane to sensei Fred Kidd. Sensei John Walton ran the club from the mid 1980s until his retirement from karate in 1991 - at that time John handed the club over to sensei Chris Vant and sensei Tony Postbeschild.
The next major change occurred in 2003. At that time the other major Dagenham Ishinryu club, based at Goresbrook and led by sensei Lee Smith, merged with Woodlane. Goresbrook had formed in the early 1990s from ex-Woodlane students, so this change was really just a unification of the original Woodlane club.