The Junior Carlton Club was a

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

gentlemen's club, now dissolved, which was established in 1864 and was disbanded in 1977.

History

Anticipating the forthcoming

Second Reform Act The Representation of the People Act 1867, 30 & 31 Vict. c. 102 (known as the Reform Act 1867 or the Second Reform Act) was a piece of British legislation that enfranchised part of the urban male working class in England and Wales for the first ...

under Benjamin Disraeli, numerous prospective electors decided to form a club closely aligned to the

Conservative party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

. Adopting the model such other clubs as the Junior Athenaeum and the Junior Oxford and Cambridge Club, the Junior Carlton styled itself after the

Carlton Club The Carlton Club is a private members' club in St James's, London. It was the original home of the Conservative Party before the creation of Conservative Central Office. Membership of the club is by nomination and election only. History The ...

, which had a fixed number of members and a lengthy waiting list, and so was likely to remain out of the reach of these soon-to-be-enfranchised/newly enfranchised electors. According to Anthony Lejeune, the Junior Carlton was the only one of the many clubs with the 'Junior' prefix to achieve anything of the prestige of the longer-standing, more established clubs which they sought to emulate.

Club building

From 1869, the club was housed in sumptuous premises at 30 Pall Mall designed by David Brandon, which it occupied well into the twentieth century. The club building was built by Lucas Brothers.Charles Thomas Lucas at Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
/ref> In the post-World War II era, the club was to be the victim of a planning decision by its ruling committee. The "senior" Carlton Club building at 94 Pall Mall had suffered a direct hit during

the Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

, and the site had proved difficult to sell for redevelopment. In 1963, the Junior Carlton's committee decided to proceed with the sale of the existing Junior Carlton building, and use part of the proceeds to purchase the site of the old Carlton. They opted to construct a bold new building described at the time as "the club of the future". The resulting concrete structure, luridly decorated to 1960s architectural tastes, opened in 1968 and is still in use today as an office building. It proved so unpopular with the membership of the time that many left, mainly joining the Carlton. By 1977, the club was wound down and its few remaining members formally merged with the Carlton.

History

Club building

References

Citations

Further reading

See also