History of Bridge Clubs in Oakham.
We now have five bridge clubs in Oakham, and recently I have found that some newer members are a little confused about which club is which, and even which ones they belong to! Because four of the clubs meet at St Joseph’s, it would be easy to assume that they are related. In some ways they are, but they each have their distinctive character, and it doesn’t follow that if you are member of one of the clubs you are a member of them all.
This is a brief history of those clubs. When I say ‘History’ I hope you are not expecting precise dates! History and dates were never my strong point. But I have been playing in Oakham for over 50 years and can at least clarify how the various clubs came about. My thanks go to some people who have helped me remember some of the details, especially Amberley Moore, Don Munro, Kath Rowlands, Jim Wilson and Paul Collins, who has consulted OBC's minutes of our late wonderful Secretary Brenda Day.
- Oakham Bridge Club.
The club was started in 1966, about three years before my husband John and I joined it. When we first came to Oakham, also in 1966, we didn’t play bridge. We learnt the game at home using ‘Collins’ Nutshell Book of Bridge’. It was 15 cm x 10 cm and 1 cm thick, 128 pages long. I still treasure that little book! Having ploughed our way through it, we were confident that we knew all there was to know about bridge (!) and promptly joined Oakham Bridge Club. We thought the club had been around longer, as many of the players were elderly (as is still the case!). Some used Culbertson as their bidding system rather than the newer Acol, so we were often confused. We were only in our late 20’s/early 30’s then. The only person besides me whom you might remember and who was at the club even before I joined was Amberley Moore. Amberly now lives with her daughter in Ilkley, by the way She sent me the following information:.
The Club was started by Daisy Gemmal, who put an advert in the Stamford Mercury in 1965 and was surprised and pleased to get about a dozen replies. The Club was set up and it met at the George Hotel (now the Whipper Inn). Acol was only just being introduced so the bidding was quite confused at times - some of the players had been playing regularly before the WW2 and didn't hold with what they thought were fancy systems.
The Club then moved to the Crown Hotel, next door to Boots and later to the Mill Restaurant in Mill Street, which was when we met you at times when we came on leave.
I think the first place I remember playing at was in a room above The Mill restaurant in Mill Street. There were usually two or three tables of Rubber Bridge, where you ‘cut in’ if anyone was sitting out. We played for pennies – old ones then – and I think the table money was 2/6d (about 12p now) and the subs £1.00 p.a., later changing to £3.00. John and I took turns to attend the club as we had small children then.
The club was not very settled at that time. As it grew there was no room for everyone at the room in Mill Street. Sometimes we played in each others’ houses. I remember playing for a time at the new Boulton’s Hotel (now the Old Wisteria) and in 1972 we moved to the George (now the Whipper Inn). In 1982 we moved again to the Crown Hotel (which no longer exists. It was where Crown Walk is now situated, opposite the market). Later we played at St John’s and St Anne’s in Westgate and in 2005 I think we moved to The British Legion in the High Street, where Wetherspoon’s now stands. RBC also used to meet there on a different evening.
OBC Duplicate at St Joseph’s
There came a time when OBC’s membership fell, and we could not afford the rent for the room upstairs in the British Legion. They had increased their rent substantially and we had only about 12 regular members. Some stalwarts met in the bar to play for free – Brenda Day, Colin Lowes, Bill and Cynthia Greenslade, Jean Broom, John, Don Munro and I were some of the regulars – but it wasn’t easy to play there with the hubbub and the TV on. I was Chairman at the time and I began to think I was going to preside over the demise of Oakham Bridge Club. We tried everywhere but eventually I found St Joseph’s, and we moved to the present venue in 2007, since when we have never looked back. At that time I particularly remember that Colin Lowes was tremendously supportive as we set up OBC in its new home, and I want to thank him as well as the others who came from the British Legion and who had ‘hung in there’.
The only problem was that we could only have three Monday nights in each month as the room was booked for one Monday a month. We could, however, have one Friday instead. OBC was still a Rubber Bridge Club but we decided that once a month ‘Friday Night was Chicago Night’. That became very popular, and after a few weeks I began to wonder whether members might like to give Duplicate a try on Fridays. I wondered though if members would be happy to play in a Duplicate Club that was not affiliated to the EBU. (Instead of Master Points, to begin with we awarded a ‘free session’ to the pair coming top each week, but that no longer is the case.) Remember that most members of OBC were keen Rubber players, and I thought would not welcome Duplicate. Besides, if you wanted to play Duplicate you could go to the Rutland Bridge Club which still met on a Thursday, though they too were constantly looking for a new venue, as the British Legion had become too expensive. (They played at Braunston Village Hall, the Baptist church and the Congregational church before settling for some time in the C of E School in Burley Road. Only in 2019 did they join other clubs at St Joseph’s)
Despite my worries, Duplicate Bridge at OBC was an immediate success. We started in 2009, at first having Chicago one Friday each moth, but eventually playing Duplicate every Friday evening. By then the other part of OBC (Rubber Bridge) had moved to Tuesdays, but gradually the numbers dwindled and in 2018 it was closed because of lack of numbers. Some members were disappointed because it had been the only club where you could go without needing a partner, ad OBC had, after all, started as Rubber Bridge Club.
- The Rutland Bridge Club
RBC grew largely out of members of OBC, so I always think of Oakham Bridge Club as the mother club. But from the outset they were two distinct clubs, one at first playing Rubber bridge only and the other Duplicate and affiliated to the EBU. We often shared premises on different nights, and to this day we have a lot of members in common, so people could be excused if they thought of them as one club.
Until recently I thought that Bill Greenslade and I were the only surviving founder members of RBC, but whilst researching the history of these clubs, I made a discovery!
I always wondered why the first meeting to set up the new Duplicate Club was held at the Tennis Club in Cricket Lawns. We saw an advert for bridge players to set up a new Duplicate Bridge club and although I had no idea what Duplicate was, I was keen to play more often, so I went to the meeting in the clubhouse in the Tennis Club.
Then it occurred to me that I might have forgotten Don Munro as a founder member of RBC, so I rang him to see what he remembered. It was then that I discovered the link between that meeting in the tennis club and RBC! Don tells me that when he first moved to Oakham in the late 60’s he discovered a neglected pair of tennis courts on the (then) outskirts of Oakham, with a run-down old shed for a club house. He contacted the Council and got the ball rolling to restore the club and build a new clubhouse, and he became President of the new tennis club when the ‘Cricket Lawns’ houses were built in the early 1970’s
One of the members of the Tennis Club, – Barry Someone – neither Don nor I can remember his surname - was a keen bridge player, as was Don and one or two others at the tennis club, and whenever there were enough people they would play bridge after their game of tennis. Barry thought it might be worthwhile setting up a bridge club, and in 1974 he advertised for players. Don can’t remember that meeting or being a founder member of RBC but I think he must have been, because he played frequently at the RBC in those early years, partnering Peter Moore. Also, he is the link between the tennis club and RBC. I have to say that I don’t remember his being at the initial meeting either, but I do remember that Bill and Cynthia Greenslade were there and a few other members from OBC, now sadly deceased. Nevertheless, I now think that if it were not for Don and his friend Barry, Rutland Bridge Club may not have been created. At any rate, RBC was born in the tennis club! (Don recently celebrated his 96th birthday, by the way. Happy birthday, Don!)
- The Bowls Club.
I was never a member of the Bowls Club Bridge, but I believe it too was established in the early 1970’s, presumably after Cricket Lawns and the Bowls Club were built. They played Rubber Bridge in those days but were quite an elite group. I did go once or twice in the early days, but they were not the friendly welcoming crowd they now are!
- The U3A bridge Club (which later became Tuesday Chicago).
Much later, in 2006, I think, I started to teach bridge to a group of 12 students from the U3A. At the same time, Patrick Miell taught a parallel group, which was also well supported. Once our students had learnt the basics we thought it would be nice to start a club for relative beginners. I found the venue at St joseph’s and Patrick and I ran the group between us. Once it was established, I decided to leave Patrick in charge, and went off to teach more people. I believe that group ran for four or five years before it began to decline in numbers.
In 2012 when I heard that the U3A group was about to disband I thought it would be a pity to waste the slot on a Tuesday afternoon because I knew that there were still some people keen to keep playing. I decided to see if we could set up a Chicago bridge club. In a short while we had plenty of members. I ran Tuesday Chicago for a couple of years (without a committee, by the way, just a group of volunteers – and I believe that is still the case.) I had to stop some of my bridge activities to look after my husband John, and Isobel Garwood took over the running of Tuesday Chicago. Now Dawn O’Higgins does it. They are both excellent leaders, and the club has gone from strength to strength – so much so that last year they had to temporarily close their membership list.
- Gentle Duplicate.
Gentle Duplicate was formed only a year ago in April 2019. From the outset I decided that I would always be ‘free’ at the meeting on a Friday afternoon so that people could come without a partner if necessary and partner me. Jim Wilson has also turned up quite often as a ‘spare’. He and Kath Rowlands have been my right-hand people, without whom the club would not have survived. I wanted to create a club where people could graduate to Duplicate from Chicago without any pressure to play quickly. The aim had been then for them to move on the OBC or RBC Duplicate clubs once they had the confidence. We ran for several weeks as just that, at first struggling to get enough tables, but gradually the membership built up (we have about 40 members now, some new and relatively young... some of Lucy’s students) and more experienced players joined us – always understanding from the outset that this was two hours of ‘gentle’ Duplicate.
After a while I asked OBC to adopt us, as it made sense to have that club under the umbrella of a well-established club. We were adopted, so now anyone who is a member of Gentle Duplicate is also a member of OBC and vice -versa. It turned out that my ambition to draw members of Gentle Duplicate to one of the evening clubs misfired, because the attraction for GD members is that we play in the afternoon, and nowadays only two and a half hours rather than three... some people prefer that to going out at night, especially in the winter.
So that is it – a rough outline of the clubs and how they came about. I think we are very lucky in a town of this size to have so much bridge available, and now that the town is growing there will be even more players to draw upon. Long may it last!
Rita
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