Happy Birthday to the Westwood Club!
This November we are celebrating the 125th birthday of the Westwood Club. However, its existence as a Reading Room goes back much further than that. The History Group has been delving into various sources and over the course of November, we will share some of our findings about the Club.
What were reading rooms?
Reading rooms began to appear in the nineteenth century in English towns and villages.
One of the earliest-known reading rooms was established in 1834 at Edgbaston, Birmingham, with the aim of encouraging labourers to spend whatever little leisure time they had, in the pursuit of reading. It was hoped that this would keep them away from the ale houses. Alcohol was not served in reading rooms.
Many in the Victorian upper classes were philanthropists who had the working class in their sights. They were willing to provide a building or a room with a supply of reading materials, as Lord Leigh did in Westwood. In return, labourers were expected to pay a small subscription for using the reading room. It was considered that they should be helping themselves and not simply accepting charity.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, labourers in both town and country did not want to have their precious free time controlled by their ‘betters’. After the First World War and the subsequent extension of voting rights to all men over 21 (and women over 30 with property qualifications) ‘ordinary’ people came to realise that they could move towards self-determination. This was the period when many reading rooms became village halls, amenities which could be used by all members of a community as well as being run and managed by them.
Although the concept of reading rooms is consigned to the past, some remain as a part of the community – as at Westwood – with the building and name remaining.
Westwood Club & Reading Room: A Timeline
1870: two old cottages, housing the school, are re-purposed as the Westwood Reading Room. A new, purpose-built school was under construction (now the Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Transfiguration).
February 1871: The Reading Room is opened by Lord Leigh: The Kenilworth Advertiser reported that “Lord Leigh gave a telling address last evening, at the opening of the Westwood Heath reading-room”.
28th November, 1898: The Reading Room becomes known as Club and Reading Rooms. This was because there was no pub in the village of Westwood; the Club was now licensed to sell alcohol.
Headmaster, Mr Cecil Furmage Neale becomes the first Secretary, a position he would hold for an extraordinary 47 years, until 1945.
1948-1960: Frederick Dash is Honorary Secretary.
1969: Maurice and Patsy McPhilimey become stewards (more about them later in the month).
November, 1974: a new extension is opened, adding to the space, amenity and functionality of the Club. By this time, there are 600 members.
The Coventry Evening Telegraph carried a detailed report about the newly-refurbished premises, whilst acknowledging its history.
“Westwood Club and Reading Room at Westwood Heath…has been established for more than 75 years. But if its origins are in the past, its image today is very much of the mid-1970s. And with the opening of a new extension wing the club becomes one of the best appointed and most up-to-date in central Warwickshire.
The quaintness of its title dates back to the days when the villages of Westwood Heath, Stoneleigh, Ashow, and Leek Wootton were in the ownership of the Leigh family of Stoneleigh Abbey. In each one, Lord Leigh established a parish reading room where estate workers and their families could improve their minds with well-chosen literature.
The reading room at Westwood Heath was housed in two brick cottages which had formerly been used as the local school. Then in 1898, because the village has no pub, it also became a social club with a licence to sell intoxicants.
The club’s first secretary, Cecil Furmage Neale, served from 1898 to 1945. Against this, today’s secretary, Ron Savage, appointed in 1968, considers himself “a mere beginner”. The club president is Mr T West.
More than £50,000 has been spent on extensions to the Westwood Club. Improvements include a new three-bedroomed flat for the stewards (Maurice and Patsy McPhillimey), a committee room, foyer, doorman’s kiosk and super his-and-hers cloakroom accommodation.
The club has added a bar-cum-games room with attractive leather-look seating, teak finish tables and regency stripe wallpaper.
The existing concert room has undergone a face-lift and plans are afoot for students of Coventry College of Art to cover the main wall with a potential mural.
Westwood Club and Reading Room is one of the few private social clubs in the area. With 600 members it is entirely self-supporting and running costs are met entirely from bar profits.
As a free house it sells a full range of Ansells and M & B beers, draught Carlsberg lager and a wide selection of wines, liqueurs and spirits. A pint of bitter costs only 15p, mild 13p, Guinness 12p, bottled beers 10p and 11p and spirits 16p a nip.
Each member pays an annual subscription of £1 and visitors, signed in by a member, can visit the club for three days for only 10p. Club activities include a monthly dance and regular games evenings; Westwood’s darts, dominoes and cribs teams play in the Kenilworth league. The football team, Westwood F.C., is managed by Martin MacDonald, a former Coventry City player, and is part of the North Warwickshire Combination.
Plenty of car parking, easy access to Coventry, Tile Hill and Kenilworth, and pleasant rural surroundings make the Westwood Club one of the most attractive of its kind in the area. It is open seven nights a week and every lunchtime (except Tuesday). Hours are from 11am to 2.30pm and from 7pm to 11pm.”
Today, the Westwood Club remains an important part of the community. As well as regular quizzes and other social events, it makes a good venue for functions of all kinds and is where we hold our Residents’ Association meetings and occasional History Group events. And it is also a good place to just enjoy a drink!
If you have any memories or photos of occasions at the club, we would love you to share them with us. Please comment below or email
Sources:
Carole King, 'The Rise and Decline of Village Reading Rooms', Rural History, Vol.20, Issue 2, October 2009, pp.163-186
Newspapers accessed at www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
Photo: Westwood Club in the 1960s (used with permission of the family of Pat Brough).