The Clubs of Porto

More English than the English...

Having recently written about the clubs of Lisbon, I thought it was worth shining a spotlight on Portugal’s second city. Porto, as a long-standing last European supply post for ships on transatlantic voyages, has an even longer-standing club culture than Lisbon, and contains more clubs than the capital. Most of the clubs have a strongly English flavour, in this particularly Anglophile corner of Portugal.

Factory House, on the Rua do Infante Dom Henrique.

The oldest club in the city is a remarkable oddity for several seasons. Factory House, dating to 1790, is also known as the British Association. From Hamilton, Bermuda to Madras, India, major trading ports of the late 18th and 19th centuries often had their own “Factory House”, functioning as a club for local British merchants - the word “factor” meaning one engaged in trade. The Factory House in Porto is the only one of these imperial institutions to have survived today. While there were earlier, informal associations of British traders in Porto dating back to the 1710s, the club took its present form on the completion of the building in 1790. It is an impressive facade, guarded behind a metal railing for much of the week, when the building is not in use. Despite pre-dating most of the London clubhouses, its facilities are as extensive as any club worldwide, including a drawing room, dining room, dessert room, ballroom, billiard room, extensive library, and of course an extensive cellar. It enjoys a perpetual lease.

The ballroom of Factory House. (Photo credit: Richard C. Edwards, ‘Where in the world is Riccardo?’ blog.)

The Club contains only some 25 members at any given time. To qualify for membership, you must be the owner or co-owner of a British port wine-producing company; each of the principal families can nominate between one and three members at a time. Membership fees are paid in both money, and in several hundred bottles of the finest wines members produce each year. Until Foreign Office cutbacks over a decade ago, it was traditional to appoint an Honorary British Consul from among its members, with the appointment managed on a rotation. Today, the Club’s social life revolves around the weekly Wednesday luncheon, serving a social as well as business function to the port trade.

The Oporto Lawn Tennis and Cricket Club on Rua do Campo Alegre. (Photo credit: Oporto Lawn Tennis and Cricket Club website.)

The Oporto Lawn Tennis and Cricket Club dates to 1855, and was originally established south of the city, at Candal in the Vila Nova de Gaia. The Club was one of many institutions which catered for the large British expat community within the city, including the Church of St. James, and the Oporto British School. It has occupied its present site since 1923, with a 1960s clubhouse.

This 18th century building on the Rua das Virtudes was the clubhouse of the old Club Ingléses from 1925 to 1967.

The Oporto Lawn Tennis and Cricket Club also hosts within it the now-defunct Clube Ingléses, a social club for expat Englishmen which existed from 1909 to 1967. From 1925 until their dissolution, they occupied an 18th century building on the site of a 14th century manorhouse in the city centre, which still stands today as the “Antigo Clube Inglés”. A plaque denotes that it is now on the city’s list of heritage buildings; while it has been converted into a restaurant with apartments around the back.

The Club Portuense on the Rua de Cândido dos Reis.

The city’s most socially prestigious club is the Club Portuense, dating to 1857. Following a business model common to continental European clubs, it owns a whole city block, leasing out the ground floor to shops, and occupying sumptuous club premises above. It remains popular with winemakers, aristocrats, and academics at Porto University, which is headquartered almost opposite. The English cultural influence is strong on this establishment which uses the English rather than Portuguese spelling of “Club”, with hallway murals depicting fox-hunting scenes. Dinners at the Club Portuense are particularly hearty affairs.

The reading room of the Ateneu Comercial do Porto on the Rua de Passos Manuel. (Photo credit: Ateneu Comercial do Porto website.)

Porto’s merchant elites set up the Ateneu Comercial do Porto in 1869. This is very much a building in three sections. A small cafe on the right of the main staircase is open to the public. A set of sumptuous function rooms occupies the first floor, including a vast theatre, which is sometimes open for public concerts. And then the rest of the ground floor, behind the staircase, houses a rabbit-warren of intimate Victorian-era members’ rooms, with a complex of drawing rooms, reading rooms, libraries, and a billiard room.

The boathouse of the Real Clube Fluvial Portuenses on the Avenida de Diogo Leite.

The Real Clube Fluvial Portuenses (Royal Porto River Club) is an aquatic sports club founded in 1876, which operates across multiple sites throughout the city. Although the main clubhouse is away from the tourist centre, built around a members’ swimming pool at Rua Aleixo da Mota in a western suburb, their most conspicuous building is the green art deco boathouse on the riverfront of the Vila Nova de Gaia on the south bank, with a first-floor cafe open to the public.

The Clube Fenianos Portuenses on the Rua Clube dos Fenianos, next to the main town hall.

More eccentric - but filled with character - is the Clube Fenianos Portuenses, founded in 1904, which translates as the “Porto Fenian Club”. The choice of name has nothing to do with any political leanings, but eveyrthing to do with the inaugural committee attending the carnival in Rio de Janeiro while clad in green cloaks, and being told they “looked like a bunch of Fenians” - which they adopted for the club name. Today, it is an arts club, which maintains a string of galleries, old and new, and performance spaces including its own theatre and its own ballroom, as well as a library that is strong on the arts. Although there is a cafe and bar, it does not have any dining facilities - in contrast to the city’s other clubs.

The Círculo Universitário do Porto, at the Rua do Campo Alegre. (Photo credit: University of Porto website.)

A more recent club, further out from the city centre, is the Círculo Universitário do Porto, founded in 1980. Converted from a 19th century mansion in a western suburb, it is modelled on the faculty clubs found in the United States, and serves faculty and alumni of the city’s main university.

The clubs of Porto are scattered throughout the city, in contrast to the way that Lisbon has a tightly-focused “Clubland” within just two blocks. They stand as testament to the strong Anglophile bent of this city, where one of its main industries, port wine, has long been dominated by ex-pat English and Scottish families. But it remains an avowedly Portuguese city - simply with very English tastes. From the billiards tables to the copies of The Times, the clubs of Porto stand as testament to this.