Newdigate House, which has been home to the Club for more than 30 years, takes its name from the family who acquired the property in 1718. Built in about 1690, it was then, and remains to this day, an outstanding building and is regarded as the finest surviving example of domestic architecture of its period in the city.
In 1704 it was thought sufficiently grand to house Marshall Tallard, the commander of the defeated French army at the Battle of Blenheim. He lived there on parole, in some considerable style, for over eight years.
He introduced the people of Nottingham to French rolls and, in his garden, cultivated the celery plant, which he apparently found growing in the ditches of the local River Leen. His new garden was, according to a contemporary account, “the admiration of the whole neighborhood”.
Now a Grade II listed building, Newdigate House was restored in 1966 to something resembling its former glory and became the current home of the Club.
When the Club moved from its earlier premises in Maple Yard, just off Nottingham’s historic Old Market Square, the panelling from the old club came too and is featured today in the World Service Bar on the ground floor. It symbolises the Club’s desire, in an ever-changing world, to keep the best of the old whilst adopting the best of the new.