This year the Royal Automobile Club is
celebrating the centenary of its Pall Mall Clubhouse. In
order to mark the occasion and the founding in 2011 of its
Chess Circle, a 100 board simultaneous is being held on
Saturday 16 April at the Clubhouse in Pall Mall.
In a truly unique format, ten of
Britain’s highest-rated grandmasters are taking part:
Mickey Adams, Luke McShane, David
Howell, Julian Hodgson, Gawain Jones, Nick Pert, Stephen
Gordon, Jon Speelman, Simon Williams and Jovanka
Houska.
This formidable team of Grandmasters will
take on ten teams of ten players drawn from the members of
the Royal Automobile Club Chess Circle, the leading players
from the other London Club teams that compete for the
Hamilton Russell Trophy, ex Varsity players and two teams of
Juniors – one from the English Chess Federation and one
drawn from Chess in Schools and Communities, a charity with
a mission to promote chess in state schools and communities.
The schedule will be as follows:
13.00
Buffet Lunch – Committee Room
14.15
Start Simultaneous - Mountbatten Room
17.30
Conclude Simultaneous
17.45
Prizegiving for Simultaneous to be held in the
Mountbatten Room.
18.15
Close of Centenary Simultaneous
The original 1911 plans for the Pall Mall
clubhouse had chess very much in mind and it has been a
popular activity within the Royal Automobile Club since the
first meeting of the Chess Circle in 1911. Over the years
the Pall Mall Clubhouse has been home to a number of
significant events. In 1929, then world champion José Raúl
Capablanca gave a demonstration of ‘Double Chess’ - this
chess variant is now often referred to as ‘bughouse’. The
Clubhouse has also hosted numerous visits from leading
figures of the chess world, including the former world
champion Gary Kasparov. In the chess world, The Royal
Automobile Club’s Pall Mall clubhouse has become almost
synonymous with the famous annual Oxford versus Cambridge
Varsity chess match, having been its sole venue since 1978.
The Royal Automobile Club Chess Circle has a very
distinguished playing record of its own. Since 1924, it has
competed with other London clubs for the Hamilton-Russell
Challenge Trophy which it has won more times than any other
club. It also has regular fixtures with teams both in the
USA, France and Gibraltar.
CONTACT DETAILS
For details of the Royal Automobile Club Chess Centenary
Event:
Siobhan Croll 020 7747 3295. Email:
For further chess-related details:
John Saunders, Editor, CHESS Magazine. Email:
THE CENTENNIAL OF A MAGNIFICENT
CLUBHOUSE
In 2011, The Royal Automobile Club
celebrates the centenary of its Pall Mall clubhouse with a
series of special events throughout the year.
After homes in Whitehall and Piccadilly,
the Club opened the doors to ‘the Palace in Pall Mall’ on 23
March 1911. Built on the site of the old War Office in Pall
Mall, the new clubhouse was designed by Charles Mewès and
Arthur Davis, assisted by Keynes Purchase architects. Mewès
and Davis were much influenced by 18th century French
architecture and had also designed The Ritz on Piccadilly.
They pioneered a steel structure as an internal framework
for the clubhouse and utilised every new scientific
innovation available at the time: electric and hydraulic
lifts, central heating and air conditioning, 120 telephone
lines, a vacuum cleaning system, refrigeration machinery
capable of producing five tons of ice per week, gas flares
to illuminate the front of the building and even electric
lighting.
The new clubhouse offered unparalleled
facilities:
258 rooms in total, including a library,
offices, bars, lounges, waiting rooms, assembly rooms,
committee rooms, smoking rooms, card rooms, writing rooms,
cloakrooms and over 100 bedrooms. There was a swimming pool,
called “the most beautiful swimming bath in England, in the
Pompeiian style”, a billiard saloon, a fencing room,
gymnasium, a bowling alley, Turkish Baths, squash courts, a
photography studio, a rifle range, a barber shop and
hairdressers, and its own Post Office, which still exists
today. Dining was important, with the original Great Gallery
able to accommodate up to 500 people.
The Daily Graphic declared, “It is
practically impossible to convey in print an adequate idea
of the magnificence, luxury and convenience of the
building.” A Vanity Fair article of the era described the
clubhouse as being ‘on a scale of grandeur absolutely
unparalleled anywhere.’
In this Centennial Year, 22 bedrooms have
been added and the Pall Mall façade has been entirely
restored.
2011 Centennial Celebrations
There will be a programme of events and activities
throughout 2011, organised by the Club’s Centenary Committee
and each Club Activity Section has planned a centenary
celebration.
Highlights include the publication of a
Squash Centenary Book, a Hundred Board Simultaneous Chess
display with Grandmasters on Saturday 16 April, an Octopush
Match & Dinner with Tanya Streeter as after dinner speaker
on Thursday 5 May, a Centenary 100 length Relay Swim, a Pall
Mall Clubhouse Centenary Bridge Cup, a Centenary Billiards
Match, the Backgammon Centenary Cup and, not forgetting
Motoring, a display of cars in the central rotunda of the
Club throughout the year, including the 1924 Sunbeam ‘Cub’
driven by K L Guinness in the French and Spanish Grand Prix
that year.
HISTORY OF THE ROYAL AUTOMOBILE CLUB
The Royal Automobile Club was founded in
1897 by Frederick Richard Simms and its distinguished
history mirrors that of motoring itself. In 1907, King
Edward VII awarded the Club the Royal title that it still
holds to this day and the Club's status was sealed as
Britain’s oldest and most influential motoring organisation.
The Club’s early years were focussed on
campaigning for the rights of the private motorist, the
introduction of the driving licence and staging the world’s
first ever motor race, Grand Prix and the famous London to
Brighton Run, along with governing motor sport in Britain.
Today, The Club continues to own and
organise the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, which
commemorates the Emancipation Run of 1896, when 30 pioneer
motorists celebrated the passing into law of the Locomotives
on the Highways Act. It is the world’s longest running
motoring event, with people coming from all over the world
annually to view around 550 cars dating from before 1905.
This year, it takes place on Sunday 6 November.
Most recently, 2010 saw the inaugural
annual Future Car Challenge, to showcase the very latest low
energy vehicles. The event – involving a 60-mile trial from
Brighton to London – received huge support from motor
manufacturers, individuals and research organisations around
the world. The 2011 Future Car Challenge takes place on
Saturday 5 November.
In 1999 the Club sold RAC Motoring
Services to the Lex Group and a new chapter in its history
began. Since that year The Royal Automobile Club, now a
private members’ club with two clubhouses, at Pall Mall and
Woodcote Park near Epsom, has continued to add modern
facilities and to refurbish the traditional public rooms in
both its clubhouses.
Membership remains at record levels of
around 16,500 members in the UK and beyond, with members
ranging from those in their teens to those over one hundred
years of age.
