Lost club · Portland Square

The Border and County Club

1977 to 1996

Opened: 1977
Gone: Closed 30 June 1996
There now: Not established
Where exactly: On Portland Square. No building survives to show the exact spot, so the pin is approximate.

One merger, and then a slow fade. The County Club had its own long life before that: founded 1869 and opened the following year on Devonshire Street, at 9 Devonshire Street by the 1873 directory, moved to 37 Lowther Street by 1884, renumbered 24 Lowther Street by 1910 in the same building, and known as the Cumberland County Club by 1934, still at that address. In 1977 it joined forces with the Border Club at the Border Club's own Portland Square premises to form the Border and County Club. The combined club lasted nineteen years. A Cumberland News piece from January 1996 announcing the closure, due at the end of June, gives the membership as eighty, down from five hundred just ten years earlier, and that fall was the reason given for shutting the doors.