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Social & Community Clubs
In the Hundred of Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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South Wraxall & District Club
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Social Clubs are non-profit organisations run by their members through a committee. The early ones were usually founded in the Victorian era by well-meaning people, often Reverend Gentlemen, as places where working men, usually not women, could meet to attend lectures and generally “improve” themselves, relax and socialise and play games, away from pubs and the problem of drink.
More recently there has been a move to set up purely social establishments, with drinks, often with bar prices that are substantially lower than those of pubs.
South Wraxall Club (left) began as a Liberal Club in 1890; by 1925 it was the South Wraxall & District Working Men’s Club. It flourishes today, but without the emphasis on men or working.
The former Liberal Club in St Margaret’s Street, Bradford
The Town Club, Market Street, Bradford was formerly a Conservative Club until 1925, when it was refounded as an apolitical club; it has only very recently begun accepting female members
The Mount Pleasant Centre Social Club, Bradford began life in the 1980s in the buildings that had previously been Christ Church School
Holt Reading Rooms is an example of the foundation of an institute where working men could seek to better themselves by adult education. It was requisitioned during World War 2 and afterwards became the Village Hall
Winsley Social Club, like the Mount Pleasant Centre, was founded in a building that had been vacated when a new school was built
In Lower Westwood, hidden up a side road, is the Westwood Social Club