The Lincoln Liberal Club
In this weekend’s article by The Survey of Lincoln, Andrew Walker examines the colourful life of a building with connections both to Winston Churchill and Manchester United.
Lincoln’s Liberal Club building on St Swithin’s Square, when it opened in 1892, was the first purpose-built political party headquarters in the city and reflected the increasingly professionalised way in which party politics was being organised in Britain.
As was the case with the nearby rival, slightly later, Constitutional Club, home to the local Conservatives, the Liberal Club building accommodated much more than a centre for political debate.
In addition to the ground floor committee rooms and lecture hall, which was regularly hired out for dances, there was a reading room, a smoking room and a smaller concert room.
On the first floor, there was a billiard room with three tables, a card room, the directors’ room, a lock-up library, (with very few books) and the caretaker’s apartment. The basement contained a kitchen, a messroom for the foundrymen and hot and cold baths.
The building was official opened by the daughter of the city’s prospective Liberal Party Parliamentary candidate, Dora Crosfield, 24, who stood in at the last minute for two prominent national Liberals who were unable to attend. Despite being opened by a woman, the Club was a male domain in its early years, apart from when being used for social occasions.
Although understated aesthetically, especially in comparison to the Constitutional Club, the large double-fronted building with its first floor balcony, had a considerable presence in the streetscape and, perhaps influenced by the opulent National Liberal Club, opened in London in 1887, significant attention was paid to its internal design, with Minton tiles, described as ‘of a handsome pattern’, and doors decorated with stained glass which were ‘beautiful but not florid in design’.
The building was designed by two Manchester men – Theodore Sington and Bernard Brameld. Sington was Manchester-born, had German-Jewish emigre parents and, by 1905, was an active member of the Conservative Party.
In 1915, aged 67, he was a journalist, whose criticisms of the government’s handling of the war led to prosecution and six months’ imprisonment with hard labour.
Bernard Brameld was a more prominent architect, co-founding the Manchester firm of Brameld & Smith, that, with Archibald Leitch, designed Manchester United’s new stadium at Old Trafford, which opened in 1910.
Perhaps the Liberal Club building’s most prominent part in political theatre was played in the December General Election of 1910.
The Lincoln Liberals contravened accepted practice and invited a Cabinet Minister to address the crowds on polling day, Saturday 3 December. Winston Churchill, the Liberal Home Secretary, was returning to London from Grimsby. Churchill agreed to speak on the building’s balcony, with the Liberal candidate, C.H. Roberts.
With the lunchtime crowd swelled to some 3000 by engineering workers, who had just clocked-off at the nearby works, Churchill struggled to be heard as he called for the reform of the House of Lords. The Lincolnshire Echo described a ‘scene of great rowdyism’ in which ‘tomatoes and other missiles were hurled at the balcony, several missing Mr Churchill by inches’.
After several attempts to speak on the balcony, and a foray into the crowd to ‘rescue’ his former military comrade, Sir Robert Filmer, the Conservative candidate, Churchill left the Liberal Club by a rear entrance and caught a London-bound train.
Considering the rather sad current state of the building it is perhaps hard to imagine it being the centre of such contentious activity.
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