Groucho heads north: famed London club to open its first outpost in West Yorkshire

The Groucho Club, the private members’ club known for its hell-raising 39-year history in the heart of London is expanding for the first time to an unlikely location: the heart of the West Yorkshire countryside.

- Lanre Bakare

The Soho club’s first outpost will be located at Bretton Hall in Wakefield , a former arts education facility within the grounds of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park , which will be converted into a club and hotel with about 60 rooms.

The appearance of the most London of brands in the Rhubarb Triangle may raise a few eyebrows but Ewan Venters, the CEO of Artfarm and Hauser & Wirth , said the move to Yorkshire mad e more sense than an oft- mooted international expansion.

“Why would we go to America fi rst, why wouldn’t we want to go to the north of England?” he said, before getting in a gentle dig at his competitors . “I wanted to avoid the Cotswolds because that doesn’t represent our membership.”

The Groucho Club was founded in 1985 by a group of publishers and agents including Carmen Callil and Liz Calder , and has 5,000 members . It welcomed female members, something that was anathema to London’s male members’ clubs, while fostering a creative membership that included everyone from members of Blur and Damien Hirst to Tracey Emin and Francis Bacon .