GOING CLUBBING

Though aged in some respects, I'm still too young to have had anything to do with the infamous Hellfire Club - once based at the Bell Hotel in Norwich - or even the Everlasting Club (which used the Maid's Head, and of which people used to say that it was easier to be admitted to the club than to get home afterwards). Both of which scandalised the city and, no doubt, an even wider area. But I have been the guest of a couple of societies which, though lacking in actual hellfire, at least qualified to be filed under the category of 'Unusual.'
The first was the Lavender Club, which came into being in 1925 when Norwich auctioneer Sam Vincent, disappointed at the cancellation of an outing, assembled a group of his own and took them for a day trip by boat to Potter Heigham. On the way they saw a lavender field, and the name was adopted.
The Lavender Club was, and may still be for all I know, devoted entirely to the gentler pleasures. Members - usually about 30 businessmen, according to the size of boat - met once a year for the sole purpose of doing nothing and enjoying the Broads in the process. They simply spent the time eating, chatting, enjoying a glass or two, and gazing at the passing scenery.
Having been on one of these trips, I can confirm that the only official business of the day was to collect subscriptions, browse the minute book (complete with the 1925 entry, along with a group photograph), and listen to a brief speech by the retiring president whose only duty was to buy a round of drinks. They then faced the onerous task of deciding the date of the following year's trip. All of which amounted to five minutes' work, at most.
The second - the Reffley Society of King's Lynn - does have history behind it. Its origins are obscure, but the Sons of Reffley is thought to have been formed in 1650, supposedly as a dining club for Royalists. Membership was limited to 30, as a protest against a Parliamentarian edict forbidding larger gatherings. The Le Strange family of Hunstanton and the Ffolkes family of Hillington may have had something to do with it, but the Brethren (as they were sometimes called) did maintain a tradition for free speech.
The group seems to have lapsed and then to have re-formed in the 18th century when drinking and dining clubs were fashionable again. Anyway, members took over a site beside a spring in a wood on the Reffley estate at Wootton, and by 1788 owned a stone 'table.' A year later they built a 'temple,' while railings were erected to protect a chalybeate spring beside which was an obelisk dedicated to Bacchus and Venus. Some 20 years earlier, the composer Thomas Arne had written a cantata titled Reffley Spring.
In 1822 the temple was enlarged to become a small six-sided building guarded by two stone creatures, with a fireplace, tables, chairs, punchbowls, glasses, a rack of churchwardens' pipes, and other exotics, all guarded by inscribed Latin curses.
Members still met annually, enjoyed a meal, smoked a pipe of special tobacco, and imbided a brandy punch made from a 'secret' recipe including water from the spring. Indeed, the post of Brewer was one of the most important. They drank toasts, laid bets (one was that a member could drink a dozen glasses of punch in a minute; the bet, I believe, was won), argued (no-one was to be offended by any remark), and meetings ended when the President, noting the punchbowls were empty, would intone, 'Gentlemen, the tide has gone out.'
Of course, the Reffley gents have enjoyed their share of headlines. In 1895 the Prince of Wales was a visitor, and Fleet Street once descended on the wood looking for orgies. Later, the Reffley calendar evolved into a sports day, but by 1970 the temple had been vandalised and society meetings had retreated into rented accommodation. The last I heard was that the breath test had put paid to gatherings which, latterly, relied on wives collecting members at 10pm to drive them home.
Bacchanalia was surely never like this.