Savile Club

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Coordinates: 51°30′45″N 0°08′57″W / 51.5124°N 0.1491°W / 51.5124; -0.1491
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Savile Club
Websitesavileclub.co.uk

The Savile Club is a traditional gentlemen's club in London that was founded in 1868. Located in fashionable and historically significant Mayfair, its membership, past and present, includes many prominent names.

Changing premises

The Savile Club's bar

Initially calling itself the New Club, it grew rapidly, outgrowing its first-floor rooms overlooking

Brook Street, owes its extravagant Dix-huitième interior to Walter Hayes Burns, the father of Lady Harcourt and the brother-in-law of financier J. P. Morgan, who commissioned William Bouwens van der Boijen of Paris to adapt it for his wife Mary Lyman Morgan to entertain in a suitable style at home. It thus includes an elegant hall, a grand staircase and a lavish Louis XV-style ballroom. Following the marriage of her youngest daughter in 1926, Lady Harcourt decided to dispose of the lease of Brook Street, which she did 12 months later to the Savile Club.[1]

Savilians

Savile Club members are known as Savilians and the Club's motto of Sodalitas Convivium implies convivial companionship. The traditional mainstays of the Savile are food and drink, good conversation, playing bridge and poker, and Savile Snooker. This is a 19th-century version of the game, whose rules were first written down in the mid-20th century by Stephen Potter. It is a form of volunteer snooker, with some unusual features (the brown ball is spotted behind baulk on the opposite equivalent of the black spot, and counts eight; yellow and green are not used, "push shots" are allowed, fouling a ball with one's tie has no penalty, and sinking two reds at once means a score of two, for example).[1]

The dining room includes two long club tables, derived from the Club's original table d'hôte (a contrast to the contemporary habit of other clubs, where members tended to eat à la carte at small separate tables). In the Victorian period, the Savile was known for its freedom of conversation and conviviality.

Evolution

Some traditions have been lost: regular cigar club dinners went with the

St Cecilia's Day concert, where Club members perform. A strong science connection has been revived with regular "Science at the Savile" talks. Other traditions have evolved: the preferred dress is still jacket and tie, but the code has been relaxed slightly to allow for the less formal attire worn in offices today; mobile phones are generally banned but can be used in the Club's old telephone area.[1]

Prominent members

Acting and the theatre

Art, illustration and cartoons

Broadcasting and journalism

Films

History and the military

Mathematics and computing

Medicine

Music

Politics and political theory

Science

Writing

Other occupations

Fictitious members of the Savile Club include Bill Haydon, the aristocratic polymath and British intelligence agent at the heart of John le Carré's novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and William French, wine merchant and Master of Wine (failed), in Alexander McCall Smith’s The Dog Who Came in from the Cold.

See also

  • List of gentlemen's clubs in London

References

  1. ^ a b c Garrett Anderson. Hang Your Halo in the Hall: the Savile Club from 1868 (1993)
  2. ^ Autobiography, With Brush and Pencil, published 1925
  3. ^ "Arthur Doyne Courtenay Bell", rcplondon.ac.uk, accessed 30 October 2023
  4. ^ Composers at the Savile Club, SOMM CD 0601 (2019)
  5. ^ "Savile Club Library".
  6. ISBN 978-0521355155
    . Retrieved 22 June 2014.
  7. ISBN 0-8386-3885-6
  8. ISBN 978-1371590116

Bibliography

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Savile Club.

51°30′45″N 0°08′57″W / 51.5124°N 0.1491°W / 51.5124; -0.1491

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