The Wedmore Bridge Club and how it came about

As recorded by Jack Sanders in 1995

Some of the dates given may not be accurate, but the sequence of the events is correct. The club was conceived outside the Borough Venture, and born in the Borough Venture, and this is how it came about.

I was walking down The Borough one morning in the late summer of 1973, or it may have been the spring of 1974, and I was waylaid by Suzanne Metters, who was outside The Borough Venture talking to Penny Heard. She stopped me and said that she believed that my wife and I played Bridge. I replied that we did. She then went on to say that Penny and she had just finished a three month course in ‘How to play Bridge’ and they wondered what to do now. Would it be possible to run a Bridge Club; if so would my wife and I help?

I said that we would provided one of them would be President and the other Chairman. They agreed and Penny became President. It so happened that she left Wedmore fairly soon after our meeting, and so the club became without a President. I then asked “where do we play?” and Suzanne said in The borough Venture.

The news was spread around and a few weeks later we started up, Monday evenings Contract Bridge, penny a hundred. Tables were made up as players arrived and at the end of a rubber anyone sitting out cut in. I became treasurer, arranged the subscriptions and table money, and Elizabeth provided table covers and helped generally.

All went well for about two years and we were running at four or five tables at a time but one day a customer returned to The Borough Venture with a new frock which smelt of tobacco and on checking it was found that there were quite a lot of articles which smelt. There were about three chain smokers in the club. We had to move; we shopped around and went to The George Hotel.

This was in about the end of 1976. We set up shop in the dining room, using the tables and chairs which were there. We paid rent and paid for coffee as required. We had to increase our table money charge because of the rent, but in spite of this it was a good move.

The George come under new management in 1980; this was not a good thing. Our rent was put up, the coffee produced was poor and the proprietor put a lock on the room heat thermometer such that we could not raise the heat to the level we wanted. We complained, to no avail, and in early 1981 we moved to the Village Hall.

Existing members who were with the club in The George Hotel are:- Barbara Biggin, Clement Dew, Margaret Duckett, Joan Lisby, Anne McElroy and Edith Percival.

The village hall was not good. There were some Mondays when we could not have it, and there were muddles over double bookings. The tables in the hall were the small folding type as used for whilst drives, not really suitable for bridge. So, at the end of 1981 we moved to Masonic Hall and our membership then stood at about six tables, and from then onwards all went well.

I stood down in March 1983, I know that date to be correct because I checked it in my autobiography!  A committee was formed under the chairmanship of Eddie Armitage who had become a member soon after coming to live in Wedmore about five years before. Duplicate bridge reared its ugly head and The Wedmore Bridge Club was no longer run under Military Dictatorship.