The Junior Constitutional Club was a political London gentlemen's club founded in 1887, and located at 101 Piccadilly. It was aligned to the Conservative party, with members having to pledge support. Heavy over-subscription for the Constitutional Club which had opened in 1883 led to the creation of a further mass-membership Conservative club.
London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile (80 km) estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans. The City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles (2.9 km2) and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow closely its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is also an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
A gentlemen's club, or traditional gentlemen's club, is a private social club originally set up by and for British upper-class men in the 18th century, and popularised by English upper middle-class men and women in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Piccadilly is a road in the City of Westminster, London to the south of Mayfair, between Hyde Park Corner in the west and Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is part of the A4 road that connects central London to Hammersmith, Earl's Court, Heathrow Airport and the M4 motorway westward. St James's is to the south of the eastern section, while the western section is built up only on the northern side. Piccadilly is just under 1 mile (1.6 km) in length, and is one of the widest and straightest streets in central London.
By 1890, it was reported by Whittakers Almanack to have 10,000 members, making it one of the largest clubs in history, but this level of membership proved to be short-lived; by 1890 its membership had halved to around the 5,500 level, and by 1900 it was still slightly further down, at 5,000. [1] It had closed by 1904, when its building was taken over by the pro-Tariff Reform United Empire Club.
The United Empire Club (UEC) was an English gentlemen's club. It was formed in 1904 with premises in Piccadilly and had many high-profile members, including John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, Sir Sandford Fleming, Sir Samuel Boulton, Sir Edmund Fremantle, Matthew White Ridley, 2nd Viscount Ridley, Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner, and Sir Charles Tupper. Its subsequent history is unclear, although there is a current organisation by that name that claims to be descended from the original.
The Reform Club is a private members' club on the south side of Pall Mall in central London, England. As with all of London's original gentlemen's clubs, it comprised an all-male membership for decades, but it was the first to change its rules to include the admission of women on equal terms in 1981. Since its founding in 1836, the Reform Club has been the traditional home for those committed to progressive political ideas, with its membership initially consisting of Radicals and Whigs. However, it is no longer associated with any particular political party, and it now serves a purely social function.
The Savage Club, founded in 1857, is a gentlemen's club in London. An associated Masonic lodge was established in 1887.
The Chelsea Arts Club is a private members club at 143 Old Church Street in Chelsea, London with a membership of over 3,800, including artists, sculptors, architects, writers, designers, actors, musicians, photographers, and filmmakers. The club was established on 21 March 1891, as a rival to the older Arts Club in Mayfair, on the instigation of the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who had been a member of the older club.
The Devonshire Club was a London gentlemen's club which was established in 1874 and was disbanded in 1976. Throughout its existence it was based at 50 St James's Street. The major Liberal club of the day was the Reform Club, but in the wake of the 1868 Reform Act's extension of the franchise, the waiting list for membership from the larger electorate grew to such an extent that a new club was formed to accommodate these new Liberal voters. The clubhouse was on the western side of St James's Street. The original intention was to call it the 'Junior Reform Club', along the model of the Junior Carlton Club formed in 1866, but complaints from the Reform Club's members led it to being named the Devonshire, in honour of its first chairman, the Duke of Devonshire, an aristocrat from a long line of Liberals.
Buck's Club is a gentlemen's club in London, located at 18 Clifford Street, established in June 1919. P. G. Wodehouse mentions it in some stories and modelled his Drones Club mostly after Buck's. It is probably best known for the Buck's Fizz cocktail, created there in 1921 by its bartender McGarry. Anthony Lejeune in his book The Gentlemen's Clubs of London (1979) comments that "Buck's Club is the only London Club to have been founded since the First World War which ranks, in social prestige and elegance, with the best of St James's Street clubs: and like them, it is named after its founder."
St Stephen's Club was a private member's club in Westminster, London, founded in 1870.
The Constitutional Club was a London gentlemen's club, now dissolved, which was established in 1883 and disbanded in 1979. Between 1886 and 1959 it had a distinctive red and yellow Victorian Neo-Gothic terracotta building at 28 Northumberland Avenue, off Trafalgar Square.
The Unionist Club was a short-lived London gentlemen's club, now dissolved, which was established in 1886, and had wound up by 1892. For the last four years of its existence, it had a clubhouse at 66-68 Pall Mall.
The Farmers Club is a London private members' club based at Whitehall Court, founded in 1842. Members are required to have an association with farming, agriculture or food.
The Junior Carlton Club was a London gentlemen's club, now dissolved, which was established in 1864 and was disbanded in 1977.
The Conservative Club was a London gentlemen's club, now dissolved, which was established in 1840. In 1950 it merged with the Bath Club, and was disbanded in 1981. From 1845 until 1959, the club occupied a building at 74 St James's Street.
The Primrose Club was a short-lived political London gentlemen's club founded in 1886 and located at 4-5 Park Place, St. James's. It was aligned to the Conservative party, with members having to pledge support. It was launched as a bid to combine the explosion of the popularity of clubs in London at the end of the nineteenth century with the phenomenal success of the Conservative-aligned Primrose League.
The National Conservative Club was a short-lived political London gentlemen's club founded in 1886. It was aligned to the Conservative party, with members having to pledge support. It was launched as a rival to the mass-membership National Liberal Club of the opposing Liberal party, but proved highly unsuccessful. According to Whitaker's Almanack, it had 2,500 members in 1890, but at a third of the National Liberal Club's membership, this was less than expected, and the NCC closed before the end of the century.
The Palace Club was a short-lived political London gentlemen's club founded in 1882. It was aligned to the Conservative party, with members having to pledge support. Unlike many of the better-established clubs like the Carlton, or some of the new clubs like the Constitutional, it never acquired a sizable membership; according to Whittakers Almanack it had only 220 members in 1890, and 250 by 1900. It closed within a decade.
The Burlington Fine Arts Club was a London gentlemen's club based at 17 Savile Row.
The Cavalry and Guards Club is a London gentlemen's club, at 127 Piccadilly, situated next to the RAF Club. It has three foundation dates:
The City of London Club was established in 1832 and is the oldest of the gentlemen's clubs based in the City of London. Its Italian Palladian-style building was designed by English architect Philip Hardwick. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is its current royal patron.
The American Club was a London gentlemen's club, now dissolved. It was established to provide a centre for London's growing expatriate American community, with the inaugural meeting being held at the Savoy Hotel on 21 October 1918.
The Public Schools Club is a former London gentlemen's club.
The Junior Athenaeum Club was a gentlemen's club in Piccadilly, London, from 1864 to the 1930s, with similar aims to the Athenaeum Club.
