THE CLUB
The club is based in Stormont Road, Battersea, London. The club has its own purpose-built four-storey building. The basement originally housed a rifle range, but this space has now been converted into a dance studio, a recording studio and a silk-screen workshop. The main floor houses the social areas, the computer suite and table tennis hall, and art room. The upper levels provide a large gym, weights room, meeting rooms, and practice rooms. There is a caged basket-ball pitch on the roof.
HISTORY
In 1884, Jocelyn Devas started a ‘Club for Working Lads’ in a room over a coffee tavern in Stewarts Road, Battersea. He was a graduate of University College Oxford, and, after his death from a climbing accident in Zermatt in 1886, his father offered a substantial endowment if his college friends would carry on the work in Battersea.
Arthur L Harding was one of these friends, and was the guiding hand behind the move to larger premises in Thessaly Road where substantial rebuilding work was carried out in 1907. The main purpose of the Club’s work was initially educational, but as this function became increasingly taken over by the London County Council’s evening classes, sporting activities began to take precedence in the programme. A club for girls, which shared the same building, was started in 1960.
The move of the Covent Garden market to Nine Elms entailed the compulsory purchase of the Thessaly Road property. The City Parochial Foundation acquired an alternative site for the Club in Stormont Road and commissioned the building of the present accommodation which was opened in 1970.
