The Norfolk Club
A Short History
The earliest record of the Norfolk Club is of two meetings held at the Bell Tavern in June 1770, when a few Norfolk gentlemen drew up a draft set of rules for the formation of the Norfolk Coterie. (The name came from a fashionable London social club which briefly flourished in the 1770s.) Their intention was simply to set up a dining club, with no specific aims beyond dining together once a month in a Norwich Tavern.
It was decided that the venue would be the ‘Bell Tavern in the Market Place Norwich upon the last Saturday in the months of June, July and August 1770 and in the months of April, May, June, July and August in the next ensuing year for ten years to come’. The document they drew up is framed and hangs in the Club to this day.
The aim of the Society was to provide members with a convivial dinner on days when they came into the city on business, as JPs and members of the Grand Jury, or to shop. They usually rode into Norwich with a servant in attendance. Horse-drawn carriages were used in inclement weather, when their wives accompanied them and by those of advanced years. The provision of good stabling at a tavern was therefore almost as important as good food.
Knowledge of the early history of the Club is largely derived from the attendance book running from 1770 to 1791, which still survives. It shows that the original eighteen members were all drawn from Norfolk nobility and gentry. There is no indication given as to how they were selected. It is presumed that an active core agreed upon the addition of friends and acquaintances who were acceptable to all.
The problem in the early years of the Society was not of recruitment but of absence. Often the winter months would see fewer than half a dozen members. Distance, illness, and the weather appeared to be the main reasons for low attendance. Additionally, several members spent long periods of the year in either London or Bath.
The Norfolk Club Today
Our current fine Georgian building was built on land which once formed part of the Greyfriars precinct. The old wall in St. Faiths Lane, behind the Club, formed the boundary between the Cathedral Close and Greyfriars. In 1792 the building served as Hudson’s Bank, later known as Norwich Crown Bank. This moved to Hardwick House in Agricultural Plain in 1866 and the building for a while became Greyfriars College. This was a small boarding school run by Alexander Lowe, who leased the house for £80 per annum from 1881. It was purchased by the Club in August 1888 for £3600 and from then on, its affairs were managed by four trustees. Funds were raised to convert the building into something more suitable for a club. It re-opened just four months later in December 1888, proclaiming itself to be ‘one of the finest clubs out of London’. The structure of the building has remained unchanged since then, with its handsome five-bay Georgian façade, two and a half storeys, with a central bay containing the door with Doric columns and pediment.
The Norfolk Club celebrated its 250th Anniversary in 2020 and remains part of a wonderful network of reciprocal clubs in the UK and around the world. An important element of Norfolk Club membership is that Members benefit from being able to use these reciprocal clubs. Whether you want to stay close to the theatres in London, or near the shops in Knightsbridge, there is a good choice of well-positioned London Clubs available to Norfolk Club Members. Many members also use our reciprocal clubs in Africa, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Europe, and Asia, when travelling around the world.