Downs Club History [updated 2004]
The Downs Club 1963-2004
The Downs Club was formally
set up in February 1963, to provide sports and social activities for the staff
and students of the hospitals and institutes established on the Downs
Road/Chiltern Road site at Belmont.
In the late 1950’s
the Royal Marsden Hospital, through the Ministry of Health acquired land and
buildings previously occupied by the London County Council, and began
development of the site, in co-operation with the Institute of Cancer Research
and two recently formed organisations, the Radiological Protection Service and
the South Metropolitan Cancer Registry. One of the buildings acquired, part of
the old Downs Hospital, was the present Downs Club Hall. With enthusiastic
support from Professor (later Sir) David Smithers, Chairman of the Royal
Marsden Hospital Building Committee, funds were secured for the conversion of
the hall into premises for a club, with construction of the lobby and a bar,
and preparation of the main hall for dancing and badminton. It was agreed that
the facilities should be available to everyone on the site, and the
Constitution of the original Downs Club reflected this, with representatives
from Sutton and Cheam Hospital as well as from those organisations which had
recently moved onto the site. Professor Smithers became the first President of
the Club, with Professor L.F. Lamerton as Chairman, Mr. E.F. George, the
Treasurer of the Royal Marsden Hospital, as Treasurer, and Mr. Peter Payne as
Membership Secretary.
The facilities then, and
for nearly ten years consisted of the hall and the bar, which was originally
much smaller than the present bar, and the use of the two tennis courts then on
the site. Numerous social and sports sections were set up. The April 1964 Club
Bulletin mentions art classes, ballroom dancing classes, a May Day dance,
midsummer dance, September barbecue, badminton, tennis, darts, motor section,
and navigation classes; there were also facilities for table tennis and judo.
At the end of the first year membership was 350; annual subscriptions were £1
for full members and 10/- for associate (family) members. By 1970, during a
period when the one major development was the extension of the bar area,
membership had risen slightly, to 460.
At that time, a major
reappraisal of the Club was undertaken by a small working party set up by the
‘sponsoring organisations’, i.e. the Royal Marsden Hospital,
Institute of Cancer Research and Sutton General Hospital; as a result, the
Committees were restructured. The Club was supervised by a Joint Committee of
Sponsors, while its everyday affairs were handled by a Management Committee. New
efforts made to increase membership and income, and provide for expansion of
the Club’s facilities.
In addition, independently
of the Club, a considerable new venture was undertaken, namely the raising of funds
for a swimming pool, for use primarily by staff of the hospitals and Institute,
and secondarily as an amenity for local schools and clubs. The fund was began
in 1969, when Sir David Smithers was given a sum of money towards the creation
of a pool for the nurses. He set up a committee, chaired by Dr. Nigel Trott, to
raise further funds. This was boosted by Alderman Frederick G. Moore, who was a
great enthusiast for swimming, and made the pool the subject of his charity
appeal while Mayor of Sutton that year. By March 1972 £9,000 had been raised by
the efforts of staff, students and friends, through donations and over 100
fund-raising events. Further donations of £5000 from the Board of the Governors
of the Royal Marsden Hospital and £4000 from the King’s Fund enabled the
construction of an enclosed pool, instead of a heated open-air pool as
originally envisaged. The pool was built between September 1972 and June 1973
at a cost of £21,000. The pool is 20m x 8m (66 x 26ft) and 1-2.3 m deep. It was
named the Roderick Moore Pool, in memory of Cllr. Moore’s grandson, who
was a patient at the Royal Marsden. Cllr. Moore died in May 1974, just before
the pool was formally opened in June by his widow and his son Ronald. When
opened the pool was put under the general responsibility of the Downs Club
Management Committee. The pool was open to all Club members during the working
day, but to swim there at weekends and two evenings during the week, one had to
join the ‘swimming section’ of the Club, at a fee of £3 per annum.
Soon afterwards in 1975,
using growing profits from the bar and substantial help from the employing
authorities, the Squash Court was built. A further achievement was the complete
restructuring of the bar area, with the creation of the new lounge and second
bar, opened in November 1976. Again, the funds for this major development came
from a combination of accumulated bar profits and large contributions from the
employing authorities.
By 1978, membership had
risen to 1200. Although the Club employed paid staff, its success depended upon
much voluntary work by members, often the behind-the-scenes but essential
committee and other work needed to register members, run sports and social
sections, plan events and handle the substantial finances. In 1978-9, the bar
takings were £61,350, which (allowing for changes in the value of the pound)
was the highest figure in its history.
At several points, the Club
has had to cope with financial crises. In 1979-80, the pool and squash court
made a small cash surplus, partly through hiring out the pool to outside bodies
6 times a week; and the fruit machine brought in a staggering £10,000. But bar
profits were insufficient to meet the cost of maintenance of the premises, and
there was a net deficit of £1400. The sponsoring organisations expected the
Club to pay its way, and were to cease payment of the £2000 subsidy the Club
had received in 1979. On this occasion the Club decided to reduce bar hours
(and hence the wage bill), increase prices, and install a new video machine and
better fruit machines, and to run a new Club lottery. Membership fees, which
had decreased in real terms since the Club opened, were increased to £4 per
annum for the bar and £7 for all facilities. Another crisis in the winter of
1982-3 caused the closure of the swimming pool and sports hall until a rescue
package could be worked out between the Club, the Institute and the Marsden.
In 1985, the Marsden
Hospital agreed to subsidise the swimming pool and squash court, provided that
these were run separately from the bar, with separate bank accounts and
executive committees. So the Club was formally split into two sections; by the
end of the year the sporting section had acquired the name “Ups
Club”. The changing rooms and sports hall lay outside this arrangement,
which remained a bone of contention until 1987 when the Ups Club assumed
responsibility for them. By then, they had become somewhat shabby.
Also in 1985, an Institute
scientist, Dr. Dave Gibson, left the laboratory to become bar manager. His businesslike
approach soon had the bar operating profitably again, and some improvements
were made to the decor and furniture. In 1987, the pool table was replaced by a
full size snooker table, which is still at the Club, in the room behind the
stage. Plans were even drawn up for another meeting room above the lounge bar,
but the Club was never quite able to afford to build it.
Until 1988, the Club
employed a doorman (Fred Frost) who checked the membership of people coming
into the Club. After he left, no replacement could be found, and security
became a problem until the present system of combination locks was put in place
in the 1990s.
In 1988-1991, the Club was
threatened by development plans; first a plan to build kitchens on the Club
site, then by plans to build houses or laboratories on the meadow to the east,
which would involve constructing a road across the site of the swimming pool
and squash court. The Club drew up a scheme to rebuild some or all of its
facilities on the land between Orchard House and F block, and was negotiating
the necessary loans and grants to achieve this when the Hospital and
Institute’s building plans eventually fell through. After 3 years of
‘planning blight’ the Club was then able to start some further refurbishment.
The changing rooms were renovated, and in 1992 the bar was fitted with new
doors, carpet, lighting, and seating. It was re-opened in July, with a
successful beer festival in August.
In 1994, the Royal Marsden
became an NHS Trust, and re-defined its boundaries. For financial reasons, it
could not retain the Downs Club, which by default became the property of NHS
Estates. Again the future of the Club was in doubt. Three years of negotiations
resulted in the following plan:
1. The Club would be run as an independent organisation.
2. The Institute and Royal Marsden would buy the sports facilities for its
staff, who could become members of the sports section (Ups Club) without
charge.
3. The Institute would take over the bar area weekday lunchtimes as its
‘Common Room’, and subsidise the selling of snacks and
non-alcoholic drinks.
Sutton Hospital had by this
time merged into St. Helier Hospital, and was unable to enter into these
agreements. Its staff could remain at the Club as associate members, by paying
a membership fee.
During the course of these
negotiations, the Club was once again in financial straits. 1995 was its worst
year yet; it was forced to make the bar manager redundant, and appoint Malcolm
Brooker as bar steward with a lower salary.
The corporate membership
plan finally came to fruition in 1997-8. The contracts with the ICR and RMT
were signed in October 1997, with free staff membership backdated to April. The
Club became non-smoking the following January, as demanded by the Institute; it
was feared that the bar’s regular patrons would then desert it, but most
stayed on, and merely went out to the foyer or the steps outside with their
cigarettes. The kitchen, which had been disused for some time, was rebuilt in
the winter to meet current standards of hygiene, with the help of a grant from
the Institute. Finally, the bar ceased weekday lunchtime operations in February
1998, and the ‘ICR Common Room’ came into existence. Further grants
were made by the Institute and Hospital to pay off rates bills incurred since
1994, and to effect urgent repairs. The flat section of roof was beginning to
let the rain in at various points; the holes in the pool building had been
filled in with sheets of used photographic film; and the electrical wiring had
been condemned as potentially dangerous. The roof was repaired in 1998, the
pool building in 1999, and the whole Club was rewired in 1999.
The plan did not work. The
sporting ‘Ups’ side was successful; the pool continued to be
popular, both with staff and with swimming classes and sub-aqua clubs which
hired the pool, bringing in much-needed cash to keep the Club going. However,
the lunchtime ‘Common Room’ did not attract enough customers to be
viable, and the bar kept going only by borrowing money from the Ups Club. In
December 1999 Malcolm Brooker was dismissed, and lunchtime opening ceased. For
a while the bar continued to operate with its part-time staff (Doug and Linda)
in the evenings, but was forced to close altogether in September 2001.
The only way the bar could
be re-opened was by using unpaid staff, for restricted opening hours. The
present ‘pH bar’ was opened in April 2002, after a winter of
cleaning and redecoration by industrious Institute students. It is now open for
staff on Thursday and Friday evenings; it runs at a profit, but its survival
and possible extension depends on the willingness of members to serve behind
the bar.
The long-term future of the
Club is still under discussion; both the Institute and hospital have
re-assessed its usage and viability, without reaching a defnite conclusion. In
2003 the hospital resumed ownership of the premises, and demanded that
improvements be made to the swimming pool so that staff may swim safely.
This short, factual account
of some major features in the Club’s history does little justice to some
of the more startling events. To, for example, the horrific memory of the
occasion when the Committee overlooked the need to renew the 10 year old
licence, and the bar was peremptorily closed, or to the recollections of some
ill-fated Thames cruises. We have not mentioned the swimming pool flasher, nor
the colourful social events that took place when Wal Zani was social secretary
- including a Rocky Horror Show and a summer festival with druid sacrifices.
In the first
Chairman’s Report, on 21st February 1964, the following appears:
“It has been a year of experiment and of experience and although we
cannot claim that the final pattern of the Club’s activities has been
established, we can at least claim to have become a viable organisation playing
an important part in life at the Downs.” Our present Chairman could well
echo those prescient remarks. So drink up, leave the changing rooms and hall as
you would like to find them and remember, suggestions and criticism are
(almost) always welcomed, but don’t be surprised if you then find
yourself co-opted onto a committee.
Nigel Trott, 1978
Martin Osborne, 2004
Comments,
additions, photos and corrections most welcome!
Please send them to Steve Edwards; e-mail edwards@sketters.co.uk
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