Nos. 66–68 (consec.) Pall Mall: the
Junior Naval and Military Club
In 1871 the leases of the three small old houses,
Nos. 66–68 (consec.), No. 67 being a back house,
at the western extremity of Pall Mall, were about
to expire. The Commissioners of Woods and
Forests decided to invite prospective lessees to
tender for the rent they would pay for a building
lease of the site. After extensive advertising in the
newspapers only four tenders were received. They
were opened on 12 December 1871, that of H.
Tod Heatly of 11 John Street, Adelphi, who
offered to pay a rent of £550, being the highest.
Shortly afterwards he signed a building agreement
with the Commissioners. (ref. 278)
The peculiarities of the site probably dictated
this unusual method of disposing of it. Until they
were set back to their present position in 1928,
the gates of Marlborough House stood in line
with the fronts of the houses on the south side of
Pall Mall, and the site to be leased therefore overlooked the private ground of Marlborough House
for the full length of both its south and west sides.
Marlborough House stood on Crown land, but it
had only relatively recently come under the personal control of the reigning sovereign. An Act of
1831 enabled William IV to grant the house to
Queen Adelaide for the term of her life, (ref. 279) and
after Queen Adelaide's death in 1849, an Act of
1850 enabled Queen Victoria to grant it to the
Prince of Wales for the term of his and the
Queen's joint lives. (ref. 280) Marlborough House
became the home of the Prince of Wales in
1863, (ref. 281) and in framing the conditions for rebuilding on the site of Nos. 66–68 Pall Mall the Commissioners had therefore to consider the maintenance of the royal privacy. Although the long
western side overlooked only the wide entrance
passage from Pall Mall to the house the Commissioners decided that no openings should be permitted on either the south or west walls, and their
insistence on this architecturally crippling condition was probably the reason for their seeking
tenders for the rental. (ref. 278)
In August 1870 the Junior Naval and Military
Club was founded in temporary premises at 19
Dover Street. (ref. 282) By June 1871 there were some
270 members, and its patrons and honorary members included the Prince of Wales, the Duke of
Edinburgh, Napoleon III and the Prince Imperial. The club was already sufficiently well
established for it to consider competing for the
lease of Nos. 66–68 Pall Mall, but for some reason
it did not submit a tender. Instead it reached an
agreement with Tod Heatly in the summer of
1872 for the erection of a club-house on the site,
and in December Thomas Dudley submitted
plans for the Commissioners' approval. The unfortunate architect was already struggling with the
difficulties imposed by the Commissioners, for in
a covering letter he admitted that his plans were
'not quite in accordance with the conditions set
forth in the particulars of Tender' and that they
had been drawn up 'with a view to the Club being
allowed to have Windows to their Building in the
rear and sides, such windows being above the line
of sight and the floor level, to be fixed windows
with opaque Glass'. Through the committee of
the club it had been explained to the Prince of
Wales that the proposed windows would not
diminish the privacy of Marlborough House, and
His Royal Highness had consented. (ref. 278)
The Commissioners nevertheless insisted on the
conditions contained in the agreement with Tod
Heatly. Dudley then submitted fresh plans which
Arthur Cates, the Commissioners' architect, considered 'to be in so many particulars objectionable,
that I handed them back to him for complete
revision'. An offer to pay £100 a year extra rent
for leave to use the proposed windows was also
rejected, and in March 1873 Dudley submitted
another design which was finally approved in the
following October. On the ground floor there was
no light except from the Pall Mall front; on the
first, second and third floors there was to be an
enclosed area on the west side, which would provide light for the staircase; and on the second and
third floor there was to be an area on the south side
which would provide indirect lighting. Otherwise
there was to be no light, except from the Pall Mall
front, until the fourth floor, which had four windows on the south front; these were set back so
far that they probably did not overlook Marlborough House. (ref. 283)
This extraordinary building (Plate 124c, 124d) was
erected at great cost and with much difficulty in
1874–5, the contractors being Messrs. Bywaters.
There were delays through 'the non-delivery of
Granite from Aberdeen, and latterly the difficulty
of getting Men to work overtime', but whether
the work was completed or not the scaffolding had
to be removed by 12 May 1874 to meet with the
Prince of Wales's requirements. In December
Dudley asked whether the arcaded openings on
the west wall might be allowed to remain open;
they had been 'designed so as not in any way to
overlook Marlborough House Yard, but solely to
afford light to the Staircase and the Dining Room
as the only means of getting the Sun's rays which
are of the utmost importance to the interior of the
Building, and I beg that you will grant the indulgence of their remaining until they become
objectionable'. The request was refused. (ref. 284)
The club-house appears to have been opened for
members' use in the latter part of 1875, the lease
being granted to the proprietor, Captain John
Elliott, of Chesterford Park, Essex, to whom Tod
Heatly had assigned his interest. (ref. 284)
The Builder
thought that the club would flourish (ref. 282) but its
members evidently disliked the quasi-troglodytic
existence to which their building condemned
them, and the short life of the Junior Naval and
Military Club proved a striking exception to the
almost universal prosperity of Victorian service
clubs. In July 1878 proceedings in bankruptcy
were pending against Captain Elliott, (ref. 285) and by
the following year the club had ceased to exist. (ref. 286)
From 1880 to 1887 the building was occupied
by the Beaconsfield Club and from 1888 to 1892
by the Unionist Club which was then wound up
owing to the loss of goodwill. A single year
(1893) was apparently enough for the Arlington
Club, but the New Oxford and Cambridge Club
remained from 1894 to 1920, when it removed to
Stratton Street. In the early 1920's the building
was shared between the Old Colony Club and a
firm of merchant bankers. (ref. 44) Negotiations for
rebuilding and for the renewal of the lease began
some thirty years before the expiry of the existing
lease. King George V intimated to the Commissioners of Crown Lands that windows need not be
forbidden on the south and west sides of the new
building, and in 1928 the gates of Marlborough
House were set back to their present position. The
old building was demolished in 1930 and the new
one completed in 1931 (see page 425).
Thomas Dudley's club-house (Plate 124c, 124d)
was ingeniously planned to take the fullest advantage of the site and yet overcome, as far as possible,
the crippling effect of the restriction forbidding
windows in the west and south elevations. The
sub-basement and basement contained the cellars,
staff-room, members' lavatories, and, in the back
wing, the spacious and lofty kitchen, lit and ventilated by a narrow roof-light at its southern end.
On the ground floor, the main part of the building
was divided into halves by a wall running parallel
with the side walls. The east half contained the
entrance hall (lit by two windows in the Pall Mall
front), a small waiting-room (lit from a small
spandrel-shaped well), and an inner hall out of
which rose the D-shaped staircase. In the back
wing was the members' dining-room (lit by a
lantern-light). The west half of the main block
contained the smoking-room (lit by three windows
in front) and at the back was the strangers' diningroom (lit from a narrow area lying behind the
arcaded centre of the west wall). The front part
of the first floor was occupied by the reading-room
(with four windows to Pall Mall) and the west
side area served to light the private dining-room in
the south-west angle, and the staircase landing. In
the back wing was a top-lit billiard-room. The
second floor contained card- and billiard-rooms in
front, and bedrooms at the back. The third,
fourth and fifth floors (the last two limited in extent to the front part of the building) contained
members' bedrooms.
The Pall Mall front was a fantastic design in a
florid French Renaissance manner, a tower-like
structure of three lofty stages, each two storeys
high and dressed with an order dividing the fourwindows-wide front into three bays, the middle
being two windows wide. In the first stage the
middle bay was flanked by paired columns of an
elaborated Doric order raised on high pedestals,
and it contained a large round-arched opening
framing a semi-domed exedra. This provided an
imposing entrance, and served to admit more light
to the front rooms, being divided by slender pillars
into four bays—two of them windows lighting the
smoking-room, one containing the entrance
doors, and the other a window to the hall. The
second stage was dressed with pilasters and quarter-columns of a curious composite order, and the
windows of both storeys had round arches. The
pilasters of the third stage had foliage capitals and
the windows of the two storeys were framed in tall
round-arched openings. Above the boldly projecting cornice was a cresting of elaborately
framed dormers, the middle one a two-light arch
surmounted by two carved mermen, against the
background of a tall pavilion roof. The west side
elevation was an asymmetrical composition,
stepping down in height from north to south, but
its first two stages were a simplified version of those
in the Pall Mall front. The paired arches in the
middle bay were glazed to admit some light to the
area recessed in this side, but although the arches
in the flanking bays were glazed for effect, they
were in fact blind.