Cavalry Club
The Cavalry Club was a London gentlemen's club, which was established in 1890. In 1975, it merged with the Guards' Club, and became the Cavalry and Guards Club, which still exists today.
When the Cavalry Club first occupied the site in 1890, it was a proprietary club owned by an officer in the 20th Hussars, but five years later, ownership passed into the hands of its members and it became a members' club. They raised the funds to build an entirely new clubhouse, which was completed on the site in 1908. The work was carried out by the architect's firm Mewes and Davies.
The future Edward VIII was known to spend a great deal of time in the Cavalry Club premises in the 1920s and 1930s, when he was Prince of Wales.
Like many London clubs, both the Cavalry Club and the Guards' Club went through a period of serious financial hardship in the 1970s. The solution proposed was a merger. The Guards' Club was due to close anyway, so their premises closed in 1975, and their 800 members[1] joined the renamed Cavalry Club, also bringing numerous objets d'art with them.
References
- ^ Numbers cited at the history page of the Club website.