Colombo Club: Changing times of a colonial bastion

An elegantly produced coffee-table book titled ‘Colombo Club- 150th Commemorative Edition’ will be launched early next month to mark the 150th anniversary of one of the country’s oldest clubs which dates back to colonial days. These extracts from the chapter ‘Flashbacks’ give an idea of the Colombo Club’s intriguing history.

An iconic establishment in the upper echelons of Sri Lanka’s cosmopolitan commercial capital, the Colombo Club is not only a relic of our colonial past but a reminder of the island’s heritage and a reassurance of the future.

The Colombo Club is one of Sri Lanka’s oldest extant clubs and quite probably, among the senior such enclaves in South Asia if not a continent that was once largely colonial.

Genesis

The club owes its existence to an idea. It arose from a vision conceptualised by the first Governor of British Ceylon – Hon. (later Lord) Frederick North – who wrote to Colonial Secretary Lord Hobart in 1804 to discern his views on social aspects of colonial life. The British Empire was founded on trade and commerce, so it was desirable that stalwarts of English and Scottish enterprise abroad should have opportunities to entertain them

Sporting grounds

Not surprising then that British Ceylon’s Governor Sir Hercules Robinson should seek to establish an eminently suitable hostelry for these worthies whose chief extracurricular interest was sport. He wrote to the Colonial Secretary requesting permission to erect a permanent structure to replace the temporary stands put up annually at the time of the major racing event in August. To this – after many ups and downs – the latter mandarin the Earl of Carnarvon responded affirmatively, and ‘a moderate rent’ was levied on land leased to the club. That redoubtable peer also instructed his colonial governor that “no unsightly buildings shall be erected and they shall not be converted to any objectionable use.”

The original club was curiously

named Colombo Assembly Rooms, set up in 1869 principally as a viewing platform for punters who otherwise had to line Galle Face Green to watch their equestrian favourites run. Assembly Rooms in Britain comprised a main hall, and adjunct chambers for cards, billiards and refreshments. Admission was by subscription in the main and unmarried women had to be chaperoned.

This snobbery disappeared with de-stratification of Victorian society, whereby candidates for membership would be discreetly screened to dissuade ‘social undesirables’ from joining such clubs. The practice of blackballing wasn’t alien to the Ceylonese avatar of these Assembly Rooms. Membership was not readily sought by natives – a second thought wasn’t given to dropping that dreaded black ball into a hat with six other white ones to dismiss the presumption of ‘outsiders’ cheekily attempting to crash the club’s hallowed portals! The social impulse

At its inception, the Turf Club – the epitome of equestrianism at the time – was a significant contributor to defraying initial costs incurred in constructing the Assembly Rooms. The former’s patron Sir Hercules Robinson was the first chairperson of the latter, which turned out to be a fortunate coincidence. Their mutual passion for horse racing however, didn’t compromise later expansion of this hostelry’s portals to accommodate less equestrian pursuits.

Consequently, the transition from makeshift structure to permanent edifice capitalised on temporary housing erected to house horse-racing spectators. Period photographs show a building with a pinnacle shaped roof constructed from cadjan atop a platform functioning as a viewing gallery. This putative ‘grandstand’ of the Galle Face Race

Course was later made permanent and used as the Colombo Club’s foundation, courtesy Governor Robinson. While the sporting impulse was a prime mover in the club’s antecedents, less muscular and more social imperatives also shaped the development of its ethos.

As reported in a Ceylon Times article datelined 30 November 1869, quoting an Assembly Rooms’ memo, it was set up for “providing Colombo with an Assembly Room and Race Stand, and which may be available for Balls, Concerts and Public Meetings, Family Bazaars, Lectures and other like purposes, and letting it out.”

Little is known about the club’s parent The Colombo Assembly Rooms Company Limited; but it’s on record that shareholders were represented by Director Alfred Wise. Its board of directors comprised military and civilian personnel from the upper echelons of British gentry and this set a precedent for when the club would be ruled with a rod of iron – by military staff officers, judges and magistrates, and business magnates of no mean repute in what was a thriving colony.

Pride of place

The Colombo Club was once regarded as ‘the premier club in Ceylon.’ This is the understanding a glance into Arnold Wright’s 1907 classic ‘Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon’ offers its browsers.

….Penning a 2016 message to ‘The History of the Colombo Club: 1871 to 2015,’ the club’s then Chairman Sega Nagendra suggested that the milieu “changed with independence and the sociological changes driven by political attitudes.” This was regarding the club’s position on membership. As he recorded: “The Colombo Club … for a good portion of its existence, catered to an exclusively British membership.” This exclusivity was sometimes reluctantly maintained, as when a Governor embargoed an ‘Open Day’ for ladies. It was challenged, undergoing a sea change over the years – from British only; through Burgher admissions; to eventually, Ceylonese males; and finally, Sri Lankan women.

And so did the club’s location shift in its early decades of existence ……. before settling down in its present accommodation at the Taj Samudra Colombo.

This peregrination was counterpointed in a later era by the processes through which the club took its present shape and form, as noted in the Introduction to a tome by Franklyn Amerasinghe writing about the Colombo Club’s “existence spanning colonial roots, struggling through a socialist era and entering the current phase of a more market driven economy.”

From exclusivity and elitism to a latter-day inclusivity, while retaining the badge of prestige and pride in the etiquette of a bygone era...