Con Club’s glory days
Andrew Walker of The Survey of Lincoln examines the Constitutional Club situated at the corner of Silver Street and Broadgate.
The Victorian Society named the Constitutional Club, a Grade II-listed building, among its ten most endangered buildings in England and Wales for 2023.
The Constitutional Club opened in its new building in November 1896, having previously occupied more modest premises at 42 Silver Street. In 1895, Colonel Seely, (Sir Charles Seely), son of the former Lincoln Liberal politician and industrialist of the same name, donated £8000 towards the new headquarters.
Colonel Seely was a member of the Liberal Unionist Party, established in 1886, which had broken away from Gladstone’s Liberal Party in opposition to his support of Irish Home Rule.
With the substantial gift of Colonel Seely, and the raising of a further £2000, the construction of the Constitutional Club was begun by Lincoln builders M. Otter and Company.
Its foundation stone was laid in June 1895 by Colonel Seely’s daughter-in-law, Hilda Seely, whose husband, Charles Hilton Seely, was the Liberal Unionist parliamentary candidate for Lincoln. He was returned as an MP the following month and was re-elected with Conservative support in 1900.
The Constitutional Club was designed by the architect William Watkins, whose work included many Lincoln buildings, such as the Girls’ High School, Lindum Road (1893) and the Gothic terracotta-fronted Peacock and Willson’s Bank, built in 1897, at 190-191 High Street (until recently, home to the clothes shop Jack Wills). Watkins also restored Greyfriars, when it became a museum in 1909.
The site of the building is a challenging one, on a tight corner plot, and with sloping ground. Nevertheless, Watkins designed a much-lauded building with a central circular hall, a spacious, cantilever stone spiral staircase, a range of offices, a news room, billiard rooms and a smoke room.
The exterior of the building was constructed with distinctive red bricks with terracotta dressings. Watkins used terracotta extensively, with that used on the building being supplied by J.C. Edwards of Ruabon, north Wales.
A frieze of national crests appears on the Silver Street façade. The prominent hexagonal turret was designed to mask the awkward corner junction of the roof. The lavish Flemish Renaissance style was almost in direct aesthetic opposition to the nearby, more sober Liberal Club.
One correspondent in Lincolnshire Echo in November 1897, signing himself a ‘Conservative Worker’, applauded a series of political lectures that had at last been organised in the building, which usually hosted ‘a purposeless round of concerts and social evenings’. He observed that the Constitutional Club seemed to be a ‘pleasure resort’ rather than the headquarters of a political organisation encouraging the participation of working men.
At times, though, politics was evident. When Charles Seely expressed his support of free trade in 1904, he lost the backing of the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, and so he was no longer welcomed by many into the building his father had largely financed and whose foundation stone his wife had laid.
The Constitutional Club closed as a social club in 1996 and remained empty until 2011. Since then, the building has been variously occupied by Circle nightclub, a Brazilian restaurant, Tiago Rodizio Bar, and Tokyo nightclub. However, it has now been vacant since 2018 and its condition is deteriorating. It is hoped that a suitable use can be found soon for this important Victorian edifice.
To find out more about The Survey of Lincoln and its work, see www.thesurveyoflincoln.co.uk
