The old Conservative Club, by Sydney Smirke and George Basevi, 1843-45

The old Conservative Club

Sydney Smirke and George Basevi

1843-45

St James's Street, London

(now the offices of a private bank)

[See commentary below]

Photograph and text 2008 by Jacqueline Banerjee

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL.]

The great London clubs have a history all their own, indeed, many individual clubs like the Carlton and the Athenaeum have whole books devoted to them. The old Conservative Club was one of the later ones to be founded. By the end of the eighteenth century, a number of coffee houses in the then highly fashionable thoroughfare of St James's Street had already turned themselves into clubs and built grand clubhouses. Three of these survive to this day: Whites, Boodles and Brooks's, all still "virtually unaltered in their classical elegance" ("A Brief History of 74 St James's Street"). By 1840, the Athenaeum, Carlton, Oxford and Cambridge, Reform, Travellers, and United Services Clubs were also already ranged in splendour along nearby Pall Mall.

The Carlton was very much the Conservatives' club, but in this same year (1840), some Conservatives who were either tired of waiting to get in, or dissidents, formed a new club of their own. Defiantly, they called it the Conservative Club, and soon commissioned George Basevi and Sydney Smirke to build them their own premises in St James's Street. The exterior is in "a Palladian design with rusticated ground floor and Corinthian pilasters on the upper floor" (Weinreb and Hibbert 199); it is "both grand and monumental," writes David Watkin, picking out not only the rustication but also the "delicately carved festoons" and "scrolled foliage" on its façade, together with the long "balustraded balcony" and "crowning frieze." Watkin is particularly taken with the cast-iron lamp standards. But it's the interior that makes the biggest impact. Here, a grand marble staircase (since removed) focused on a square saloon with a gallery and a glass-centred dome above it. Apart from the staircase, the main structural elements are still in place, and these have recently been restored to their original splendour. Open arches, mirrors, height and natural light are all used to maximize the sense of space here, and the lines and colours of Messers Sang and Naundorff's interior decoration combine with all this to create an extraordinarily rich effect.

After being bombed in World War II, the Carlton Club moved into nearby premises on St James's Street. It is still there. The Conservative Club, however, merged with the Bath Club and moved away to Brook Street in 1959, finally closing its doors in 1981. By then its old premises had become an office block. We may be grateful that the current occupiers, a private bank, have had the means to restore it so faithfully.

Other Views

Sources

"A Brief History of 74 St James's Street." Information sheet available at the bank at Open House London weekend, 20-21 September 2008.

Sheppard, F. H. W. "St James's Street, West Side, Existing Buildings." Survey of London, Vols. 29 and 30, St James Westminster, Part I (1960). Viewed 9 October 2008.

Watkin, David. "Cultured Club." bd: The Architects' Website. Viewed 9 October 2008.

Weinreb, Ben and Christopher Hibbert, eds. The London Encyclopaedia. London: Macmillan, rev. ed. 1992.

Last modified 9 October 2008