Lost Clubs: The former clubhouse of the City University Club (1895-2017)
An archetypal City of London luncheon club
The building today, which housed the City University Club from 1895 to 2017, at 50 Cornhill.
I still remember the City University Club (CUC) in its original building, which it occupied for 122 years. It stood on the third, fourth and fifth floors of 50 Cornhill, 300 metres from the Bank of England.
The CUC was set up in 1895, originally for graduates of Oxford and Cambridge Universities who were working in the City of London. It was one of a flurry of City clubs, starting with the City of London Club in 1832, and mushrooming to some three-dozen City clubs after the 1860s (I previously looked at the City Liberal Club as an example of this phenomenon) - although most have since closed down.
The CUC, with a membership drawing extensively on bankers, has long had a strongly international flavour - its reciprocals listing of some 450 clubs worldwide is the most extensive reciprocals list of London’s historic clubs.
The third-floor Smoking Room of the old premises.
When the Club first opened in 1895, the lower three floors of the building were used as a private bank, Prescott, Dimsdale, Cave, Tugwell & Co. Ltd, which had its roots going back to 1766 (as Prescott, Grote, Culverden & Hollingsworth), and then became Prescott’s Bank after 1903; and was from 1918 acquired by the National Provincial Bank, which in turn eventually amalgamated into the NatWest group.
In 1997, the bank closed down, and the building was given a Grade II Listing. Two years later, these lower floors became a Fuller’s pub, The Counting House, which is still there today.
The fourth-floor Dining Room of the old premises.
The Cornhill premises had a charm of their own. The building had been constructed for the bank in 1891-2, designed by City-based architect Henry Cowell Boyes (1846-1900, best known for his churches), and it was built by the eponymous firm of the late William Cubitt. The upstairs establishment very much operated as a luncheon club, booming over long lunches, but closed in the evenings. It had two main rooms: the yellow-walled Smoking Room took up the third floor, and the green-walled Dining Room took up the fourth floor. Both floorplans followed an L-shaped pattern. The Club’s administrative offices were in the attic. Although there was a somewhat eccentric lift in the Club’s later years, the premises were principally reached via a very steep staircase on the building’s left-hand side.
Visitors to the City University Club’s old premises approached through this side door.
The City University Club moved out at the end of 2017, when agreement could not be reached with the Club’s landlord on the terms for continuing their lease. I remember going for a nostalgic final lunch in December of 2017, which had a “last supper” feel to it. Once they moved out, the former clubrooms were converted into a 15-bedroom boutique hotel, which opened in 2019, run by The Counting House pub below.
A fourth-floor bedroom in The Counting House’s boutique hotel, converted from part of the old Dining Room of the City University Club.
The CUC moved to its current location at 42 Crutched Friars in January 2018, initially moving in with the Lloyd’s Club, and undergoing a full merger thereafter, which saw the Lloyd’s Club subsumed into the CUC.
