Pitt Club

The facade of the Pitt Club.

The University Pitt Club, popularly referred to as the Pitt Club, or merely as "Club", is a club, only open to male students at the University of Cambridge.^[1] In the past, most of its membership attended certain private schools,^[2] and whilst this is no longer a criterion for membership it is still largely true. Membership is for life.

It was founded in 1835 and named in honour of William Pitt the Younger,^[2] who had been a student at Pembroke College, Cambridge. The Club has premises at 7a Jesus Lane, which was originally designed as Victorian Roman Baths in 1863 by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt. The baths were an extremely short-lived venture, opening in late February 1863, and closing by December of that year. After the closure, a liquidation sale ensued, and the building was auctioned off in 1865, being bought by its own architect, Wyatt for £2,700.^[3] He rented out half of the building to the Pitt Club, and the other half to Orme's Billiards Rooms.^[4][5] Later, the club bought the entire building, and for much of the 20th century, the club occupied the whole of this prominent neo-classical building. The clubhouse was designated a Grade II listed building in 1950.^[6] As the Club went through mounting financial difficulties in the 1990s, it sold a 25-year leasehold on the ground floor of its building to the Pizza Express chain in October 1997. Since then, the Club has occupied the first floor of the building, with the entire ground floor now taken up by the restaurant ^[2][7].

The Pitt Club's equivalent Oxford club is the Gridiron Club. Several other universities also have comparable establishments, including the Skull and Bones at Yale, the Pacifica House at Brown and the Porcellian Club at Harvard. The Pitt Club maintains reciprocal relations with the Oxford and Cambridge Club and Oxford's Gridiron Club.^[8]

In October 2011 the Pitt Club set up the Pitt Club Scholarship. Graduate students applying to read for an MPhil in Politics or International Relations will be eligible to apply for the scholarship which will provide up to £15,000 per annum to cover fees, maintenance, travel costs or other funding to help with research. The Pitt Club Scholarship is open to any student, regardless of nationality, age, gender or race.^[9]

The current president of the Pitt Club is the renowned History of Art Professor David Watkin. The other trustees are Tim Steel, Jeremy Norman and Lord Edward Spencer Churchill.

Notable members and former members of the club include kings Edward VII and George V, HRH Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, the economist John Maynard Keynes, Cambridge spies Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, and journalist Sir David Frost.

References

Coordinates: 52°12′30″N 0°07′11″E / 52.20824°N 0.11966°E / 52.20824; 0.11966