Civic Club is a heritage-listed club house at 36 Ryan Street, Charters Towers City, Charters Towers, Charters Towers Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built in 1900. It is also known as Londoners' Club. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
History
The Civic Club was constructed in 1900 as clubrooms providing recreational facilities for members of the Londoners' Club, which had its origins in informal meetings at the North Australian Hotel, Charters Towers, in 1877.
Discovered in late 1871, Charters Towers became the richest of the North Queensland mining fields. It developed rapidly and was proclaimed a municipality in 1877. The construction of the Great Northern railway in 1882 created easy access to the port at Townsville, solving the problem of high freight costs experienced by many other mining fields. The gold at Charters Towers was in deep reefs and the equipment needed to extract and process it was financed by substantial southern and overseas investment in mining companies. The town became a prosperous centre providing employment for a considerable number of people.
In the year when the mushrooming goldfield became officially a town, a group of mining men began meeting informally at the North Australian Hotel. Later, they were to call themselves the Londoners' Association. Hotels have always been meeting places and it was common at the time for larger hotels to provide rooms for hire to clubs and associations, usually on an upper storey. However, the convenience of meeting in a place which could readily provide food and drink was somewhat offset by noise from other patrons, the limitations placed on club members activities and a general lack of privacy. Typically, clubs that held regular meetings eventually acquired their own premises.
In 1885, Thomas Craven, a Trustee for the association purchased the land on which the Londoners' Association built their clubhouse. In the late 1880s and 1890s, Charters Towers boomed and handsome public buildings replaced the modest structures of the early township. In 1900 the association applied for a club liquor licence for their new clubhouse and were registered as the Londoners' Club. The premises were opened in May 1900 and provided a bar plus comfortable and well-lit rooms for billiards and card playing. Card games were subject to severe restrictions in hotels and the club is said to have offered all night gaming facilities. Card tables were installed with drawers to hold money, chips and, it was rumoured, gold dust and even pistols. Monthly smoke concerts were held, informal affairs where the members themselves provided the entertainment.
The membership of the club was exclusively male and comprised many of the city's most influential men. Belonging to a club, particularly one that had socially and professionally prominent members, was an important aspect of business as well as social life for many men in this era. Membership was sought after and the club visitor's book shows that overseas investors were often entertained at the club by local businessmen during the boom years. Visitors included mining men from London, South Africa, Czechoslovakia, America and New Guinea. The convivial setting provided by the club was no doubt conducive to promoting professional as well as personal contacts amongst members generally. From 1907, it was renamed the Civic Club.
The clubhouse was built in the year that the population of the city reached its peak of 27,000. Although gold production on the field had peaked in 1899 at an impressive , it soon became clear that these grades did not continue at depth. Gold prices also fell and by 1920 only one mine in Charters Towers was still operational. People, businesses and even the more portable buildings moved away from the town and by the end of the First World War the population had more than halved. This in turn led to a decline in membership of the Civic Club.
The availability of large redundant buildings in a town with a well-developed infrastructure and a rail connection suggested the possibility of establishing boarding schools to several Churches. Charters Towers soon found a new role as an educational centre and is still a major regional centre in the north. The Civic Club continued to operate and, maintaining its original billiard tables set on concrete blocks, has often organised snooker tournaments.
The Civic Club was established as a men's club and remained a male preserve until 1980, when women were admitted during a period of rejuvenation when its membership base was broadened. The Club is now one of the few surviving examples of its type in a country town.