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The Kimberley Club

Why Kimberley Matters

Over the years, we have noticed that many of our guests—whether visiting Kimberley for business or leisure—have wondered why this remarkable city has played such an important role in South Africa's history over the past 160 years.

These pages invite you on a coffee-table journey through Kimberley's past, from the discovery of the Eureka Diamond in 1867 and the Great Diamond Rush, through wars, political change and the rise of the world's diamond industry, to the city we know today. They are not intended to be an academic history, but rather an enjoyable introduction to the people, places and events that shaped Kimberley.

So, make yourself comfortable, pour a cappuccino or a cup of chai, and enjoy exploring the remarkable story of one of South Africa's most fascinating cities.

Much More Than a Clubhouse

Standing on Du Toitspan Road, the Kimberley Club is one of the city’s most remarkable surviving institutions. For more than 140 years, it has been associated with the diamond magnates, politicians, businessmen, soldiers, adventurers and visitors who passed through Kimberley during some of the most important periods in South African history.

Its imposing façade gives the impression of a building that has always looked much as it does today. In reality, the Kimberley Club has been repeatedly rebuilt, enlarged and altered. Two disastrous fires destroyed its earliest clubhouses, while later extensions gradually transformed the building into the familiar landmark seen on Du Toitspan Road today.

The first practical steps were taken at a meeting on 20 May 1881, when 74 prominent Kimberley citizens enthusiastically adopted a scheme to establish a trust deed to erect a new clubhouse. With each of them pledging to take one debenture share of £100, the Kimberley Club Company was established. Among the founding members were Leander Starr Jameson, Charles Dunnell Rudd, and 23-year-old Cecil John Rhodes. In April 1880, he and his partner, Charles Dunnell Rudd, founded the De Beers Mining Company. In March 1881, Rhodes was elected a member of the Cape Assembly for Barkly.

On 1 August 1881, a meeting was held to launch the new enterprise. The articles of association were signed, stating that the Club was a "Stock Company of Limited Liability." Full membership was limited to 250 and was to be attained by election. The new Club provided a meeting place for the businessmen, mine owners, professionals and public figures who were increasingly shaping the affairs of the diamond fields. In an era before modern hotels, conference centres and private business lounges, clubs of this kind were much more than places for recreation. Deals were discussed, alliances formed, visitors entertained and news exchanged over meals, drinks and games of billiards.

The first purpose-built clubhouse opened on 14 August 1882 on Du Toitspan Road. To celebrate the opening, a gala fancy dress ball, known as the Decemvir Ball,  had been held 10 days earlier. Although comparatively modest beside the building that stands there today, it was already a substantial two-storey structure with broad verandahs. The ground floor contained the principal dining and social rooms, while the upper floor included a billiard room, reading room and other facilities for members. It quickly became one of the centres of Kimberley’s social and business life.

The First Great Fire at the Kimberley Club: 1886

Disaster struck on the evening of 1 November 1886. At about a quarter to eight, members dining downstairs were startled by a heavy thud from the floor above, followed by a succession of alarming crashes. Within minutes, passers-by on Du Toitspan Road saw smoke pouring from the upstairs windows, soon followed by flames. The fire had taken hold in the upper part of the clubhouse and spread with frightening speed.

Members attempted to reach the upper floor but were driven back by intense heat and thick smoke. Efforts to fight the blaze were soon abandoned, and the upper portion of the building was destroyed. The fire appears to have begun in or around the upstairs billiard room. Contemporary accounts described a succession of alarming noises, like lamps falling, before the flames took hold. What remained was little more than the shell of the lower storey and portions of the exterior walls. Yet the Club had no intention of abandoning its Du Toitspan Road home.

Rebuilding the Clubhouse: 1886–1887

The fire immediately raised a difficult question: should the surviving structure be demolished and an entirely new clubhouse built? Eight local contractors submitted tenders for pulling down the remaining walls. The Committee initially accepted one of them, but then reconsidered. Rather than destroy everything that remained, it was decided to retain and strengthen the surviving lower walls and arches while demolishing the damaged upper storey. This decision helps explain the close resemblance between photographs of the first and second clubhouses.

Architect Sydney Stent had to work around the surviving structure, leaving little opportunity to redesign the exterior completely. His principal innovation was a proposal to replace the decorative timberwork of the verandahs with patterned cast iron, but the idea was abandoned when the additional cost was calculated at £800. Even so, many of the structural timber pillars for the extensive verandah were replaced by iron. Inside, the transformation was far more dramatic. New mahogany furniture, specified to be “as dark a colour as possible”, was ordered in London through the Kimberley firm Hill and Paddon, together with new Turkey rugs and other fittings.

Electric lighting was considered but rejected because of the cost. Instead, the Club ordered newly patented “safety” paraffin lamps from England — a decision that understandably caused some unease so soon after a devastating fire. It took more than eight months to restore the clubhouse. As work neared completion, the building itself became a Kimberley attraction. Curious residents wandered through the partly finished rooms and the design of what was described as Kimberley’s “most important domestic building” became the talk of the town.

A contemporary description of the completed clubhouse gives us a remarkably detailed picture of its interior. Visitors entering from Du Toitspan Road passed through a broad doorway into a tiled central hall approximately 38 feet long. To the right was the large dining room, capable of seating 80 members at small tables. Glass doors opened onto the verandah and a large tiled fireplace with a substantial teak mantelpiece dominated one end of the room. Beyond were the serving room, kitchen, scullery, larder and pantry.

To the left was the morning room, furnished with settees, lounges and coffee tables. It too opened onto the verandah and contained an enormous mosaic-tiled fireplace. At the far end was a bar for the serving of wines and other refreshments. A wide staircase led upstairs to the reading room, writing area, card room and private dining room. The reading and card rooms were decorated with unusual refinement, including Japanese-patterned wallpaper, touches of gold and carefully subdued colours. The reconstructed Club was not merely functional. By the standards of late-Victorian Kimberley, its interior was luxurious.

Here also stood the Club’s imposing billiard room, directly above the dining room. Two billiard tables occupied part of the room, while raised seating, lounges and coffee tables provided space for spectators and conversation. Most importantly for interpreting early photographs of the clubhouse, the billiard room was illuminated from above by a long glazed roof lantern. This prominent structure is visible in photographs of both the first and the second clubhouses. 

Growing Popularity and the Need for Accommodation: 1890

During the 1880s, the Kimberley Club became closely associated with the extraordinary group of men competing for control of the diamond industry. Among them were Cecil Rhodes, Barney Barnato, Alfred Beit, F. S. Philipson-Stow, Sir Charles Warren and many other figures whose names recur throughout Kimberley’s history. The Club provided a convenient neutral meeting place away from the mine compounds and company offices, and important discussions inevitably took place within its rooms.

During the great struggle for control of the Kimberley diamond mines in the late 1880s, Rhodes and Barnato were familiar figures in the social and business world the Club represented. Their eventual agreement helped clear the way for the formation of De Beers Consolidated Mines in 1888, bringing the major Kimberley mines under one organisation and fundamentally reshaping the international diamond industry.

For all its grandeur and growing popularity, the Club  had one serious weakness: accommodation. Visitors and non-resident members could enjoy excellent dining and social facilities, but members actually living at the Club had considerably less comfortable surroundings. The available bedrooms were largely corrugated-iron structures in the backyard. They apparently lacked running water, and resident members shared a single bathroom.

The Club wanted to improve its accommodation but had little room in which to expand. Then, in 1890, an opportunity arose immediately next door. A wood-and-iron cottage adjoining the Club on Du Toitspan Road came onto the market. It had once belonged to Julius Pam, a prominent diamond merchant, and had narrowly escaped destruction during the 1886 fire. In May 1890, the Kimberley Club purchased the property for £1,650.

The acquisition immediately gave the Club four additional bedrooms. The cottage itself was hardly grand. It was a typical Kimberley wood-and-iron house and somewhat rickety even by contemporary standards. Yet its stoep became one of the most fashionable informal gathering places at the Club. It was later said that to be seen sitting on the stoep of Pam’s Cottage was to be numbered among Kimberley’s elite. The cottage would remain beside the clubhouse for another thirty years and, as events soon demonstrated, would prove unexpectedly important to the Club’s survival.

The Second Great Fire at the Kimberley Club: 1895

Shortly before dawn on 11 October 1895, fire once again swept through the Kimberley Club. The precise cause was never established. One persistent theory blamed the Club’s electric lighting system. A light was reportedly seen inside the building between three and four o’clock that morning, leading to speculation that an electrical fault had caused the blaze. The Diamond Fields Advertiser rejected the suggestion, pointing out that the electric lights had supposedly been switched off shortly after midnight.

Whatever its cause, the result was devastating. For the second time in less than a decade, much of the Kimberley Club lay in ruins. Labourers spent the next two days making the damaged walls safe while the Committee considered what could be salvaged. No one seriously suggested that the Club would relocate. A third clubhouse would rise on the same site.

The Third Clubhouse: 1896

The Club’s total loss was assessed at £10,650, which the South British and Transatlantic insurance companies paid jointly. Kimberley architect D.W. Greatbatch was commissioned to design the replacement clubhouse, with the cost initially not to exceed £6,000.

Greatbatch was instructed to work broadly from the previous layout while making several important changes. One of these fundamentally altered the building's appearance. The billiard room would no longer occupy the upper floor beneath a roof lantern. Instead, a detached billiard room was to be provided at the rear of the Club, while the former upstairs billiard-room area would be used for a private dining room and card room. This explains one of the most obvious differences between photographs of the 1887 and 1896 buildings: the long roof lantern disappeared.

Church and McLaughlin undertook the construction, and Greatbatch promised completion by the end of June 1896. The workmanship proved remarkably durable. Much of what survives in the older part of the Kimberley Club today — including the great hall, staircase, fireplaces, tiles and other architectural details — belongs to this rebuilding. A high brick wall was also erected between the Club and the neighbouring Roman Catholic church, now St Mary’s Cathedral. The third clubhouse provided the durable architectural core around which the Kimberley Club would continue to develop.

Greatbatch also redesigned the principal staircase with a double bend and placed a large stained-glass window on its landing. The staircase became one of the great interior features of the Club. A bronze figure served as a lamp standard in the tiled entrance hall, while the large coloured window included panels bearing the dates 1881 and 1896, commemorating the Club's foundation and the completion of the new building.

The Club During the Siege of Kimberley: 1899–1900

Only a few years later, the Club found itself at the centre of another great episode in Kimberley’s history. When the South African War began in October 1899, Kimberley was surrounded by Boer forces and endured a siege lasting 124 days. At first, life at the Club continued with a remarkable degree of normality. Members still gathered for meals and conversation, although food shortages and the increasing danger from shellfire gradually changed daily life.

The Club’s members included many of the businessmen, engineers, military officers and civic leaders involved in the defence of Kimberley. One of the more memorable stories concerns architect Fergus Carstairs Rogers, who was wounded by Boer shellfire. Despite his injuries, he is said to have demanded that he be taken “into the Club”. Whether partly humour or entirely serious, the remark captures something of the institution’s place in Kimberley society at the time. According to the story, fortified by a tot of whisky rather than chloroform, Rogers had a piece of shrapnel from a Long Tom shell removed on one of the Club's dining-room tables. The siege was finally lifted on 15 February 1900.

A New Wing and a New Front Façade: 1920–1922

By the early twentieth century, the Club faced an old problem again: it needed more and better bedrooms. As early as 1902, there were suggestions that Pam’s Cottage should be demolished and replaced with a substantial extension, but the cost repeatedly prevented the scheme from going ahead. The opportunity finally came after the First World War.

In April 1920, De Beers Consolidated Mines donated £5,000 towards alterations and improvements to the Club property. Architects Greatbatch & Timlin were commissioned to prepare plans for a substantial extension on the site of Pam’s cottage. The scheme provided additional bedrooms upstairs and a new billiard room on the ground floor, while extending the clubhouse frontage along Du Toitspan Road.

The estimated cost considerably exceeded the De Beers donation, so members raised additional funds through debentures. Construction began in 1920 under contractor John Hodgson. Then, in July 1921, the architects discovered that the timberwork of the existing front balcony and stoep had deteriorated beyond repair. They recommended replacing it with a permanent concrete structure.

The result was the series of concrete arches that characterise the Du Toitspan Road façade today. This was one of the most important architectural changes in the Kimberley Club's history. The picturesque timber verandahs of the Victorian clubhouse disappeared, replaced by the heavier and more formal arcade familiar to generations of Kimberley residents.

The extension was finally ready for occupation in May 1922, at a cost of £11,000. The Kimberley Club that visitors recognise today is therefore the product of several distinct periods. Its central historic core largely reflects Greatbatch’s 1896 reconstruction, while the extended frontage and characteristic concrete balcony and arcade date principally from the 1920–22 alterations.

A Royal Guest – Prince George

In March 1934, the Club received one of its most distinguished visitors. Prince George, Duke of Kent, the youngest surviving son of King George V, visited Kimberley as part of a South African tour. The Kimberley Club offered itself as his temporary residence, placing the entire upper portion of the clubhouse and the private dining room at the disposal of the Prince and his staff. The Club was determined to make an impression.

Sir David Harris, one of Kimberley’s great diamond personalities, even offered his own finest glassware, crockery, furniture and silver for the occasion, urging the Committee to “put our best foot forward.” The highlight was a gala banquet financed by De Beers, to which women were also invited.

It nearly ended dramatically. During the fish course, Prince George choked on a bone and was forced to leave the dining room. Fortunately, Club member and local dentist Dr Angus Galloway lived nearby. He was summoned and successfully removed the bone from the Prince’s palate. The Prince recovered, and the visit otherwise proved an enormous success.

The Ladies’ Annexe: 1937

For most of its early history, the Kimberley Club remained overwhelmingly a male preserve. Women might occasionally attend special functions, but the idea that they should regularly enjoy the Club’s facilities remained deeply controversial. By 1936, however, some members felt the Club’s rules had become increasingly outdated.

At that year’s Annual General Meeting, G.S. Scott argued that the Kimberley Club should follow the example of other clubs and make permanent provision for women guests. Some older members regarded his proposal as almost revolutionary. One member thought entertaining women twice a week was “going altogether too far”. Another believed the subject was so explosive that it should only be discussed at an extraordinary meeting.

Scott persisted. The debate might have continued indefinitely had E.H. Farrer, a De Beers director and later President of the Club, not intervened. At an extraordinary meeting on 26 October 1936, Farrer announced that De Beers would provide £2,000 towards the construction of a Ladies’ Annexe. That changed the argument considerably. The next question was where women should be accommodated. Some members wanted an entrance from Du Toitspan Road. Others preferred an annexe facing Currey Street, thereby keeping the traditional clubhouse itself essentially unchanged. The arrangement eventually chosen says much about the social conventions of the period.

A two-storey building at the rear of the Club, previously used for staff accommodation and storerooms, was converted into the Ladies’ Annexe. Women entered through the garden from Currey Street, leaving the principal male clubhouse largely undisturbed. Messrs Verheyen undertook the conversion. The new annexe included a lounge and dining facilities, allowing members to entertain women guests for morning or afternoon tea and luncheon. It opened on 12 May 1937 with a banquet that also celebrated the coronation of King George VI.

Despite predictions from some traditionalists that the change would disrupt Club life, nothing very alarming happened. The women enjoyed the hospitality, the Club gained additional revenue, and the feared collapse of its traditional atmosphere failed to materialise. The 1937 Ladies’ Annexe survives as an important part of the Club's history and helps explain the development of the buildings behind the Du Toitspan Road frontage.

A Second Royal Visit: 1947

On 18 April 1947, the British Royal Family paid a second visit to Kimberley. King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret came to Kimberley during the Royal Family’s tour of South Africa. The Kimberley Club was placed at their disposal.

Preparations began months beforehand and included extensive painting and rewiring. The entire upper floor was reserved for the royal party. Room 3 was prepared for the King, while the recently improved Room 4 was allocated to the Queen and the two Princesses. The former card room was converted into a special bar, and arrangements were made to serve drinks in the reading room.

A New Ladies' Lounge and Du Toitspan Road Entrance: 1961–1962

By the beginning of the 1960s, the Club was once again changing with the times. At an extraordinary meeting on 22 April 1961, members approved an ambitious programme of alterations. The existing ground-floor billiard room was to be converted into a new Ladies’ Lounge. This required the billiard room to move yet again. A new billiard room was constructed at the rear of the Club on the site of the secretary’s office block. The secretary’s office was moved into part of the old card room, while the remainder of that room became an additional bedroom.

By mid-1962, most of this work had been completed, although the most important part of the scheme — the new Ladies’ Lounge — took longer. The conversion of the former billiard room was finally approved in May 1962. Designed internally by Johannesburg decorator Pam Fordyce, the new lounge was deliberately elegant and contemporary. Chandeliers, jade-and-gold curtains, pale-gold upholstery, a softly illuminated display cabinet and deep carpeting created a room very different from the heavier Victorian interiors elsewhere in the Club.

Most significantly, the new Ladies’ Lounge had its own entrance directly from Du Toitspan Road. For the first time, women using the Club's designated facilities could enter directly from the principal street frontage rather than through the rear garden from Currey Street. The new lounge was officially opened on 21 November 1962 with a buffet supper for members and their families. The  1937 Ladies’ Annexe at the rear was consequently converted into a luxury suite for married visitors with an additional wood-panelled dining room on the ground floor.

The Duke of Edinburgh – 1995

Almost half a century after the last Royal visit, another member of the British Royal Family visited. On 22 March 1995, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, came to Kimberley during Queen Elizabeth II's State Visit to South Africa. Prince Philip was welcomed by Northern Cape Premier Manne Dipico, together with other provincial and city dignitaries, including Ethne Papenfus, Speaker of the Northern Cape Parliament, and Kimberley Mayor Herbert Rose.

His programme included Harry Oppenheimer House and the Big Hole Mine Museum before a luncheon at the Kimberley Club. He later appeared on the Club balcony, creating another link with the famous royal visit of 1947. Members of the Galeshewe Choir performed during the occasion.

A Building That Records Its Own History

Few Kimberley buildings reveal the development of the city quite as clearly as the Kimberley Club. Look carefully, and its different periods can still be read in the architecture. Behind the concrete arches of the 1920s survives much of Greatbatch’s 1896 clubhouse. Behind that are later dining rooms, bedrooms and service buildings that reflect more than a century of changing expectations about accommodation, entertainment and social life.

The Club’s history can even be traced through the journeys of individual rooms: billiard rooms becoming lounges, staff quarters becoming a Ladies’ Annexe, a neighbouring wood-and-iron cottage becoming a substantial new wing. What appears from Du Toitspan Road to be a single grand building is actually the result of more than a century of adaptation.

The Kimberley Club has been much more than a handsome building. Its rooms have witnessed the rise of the diamond industry, the ambitions of men such as Rhodes and Barnato, the Siege of Kimberley, royal visits, changing social customs and the gradual transformation of Kimberley itself. Some aspects of its past inevitably reflect the social divisions and conventions of their time. For decades it represented a small and privileged section of Kimberley society, and even the gradual admission of women required lengthy debate and separate facilities.

Yet that history is itself revealing. The Club survives as a remarkable record of the world from which modern Kimberley emerged — a world of diamond fortunes and Victorian formality, of exclusive institutions and changing conventions, but also of extraordinary personalities and events that reached far beyond the Northern Cape. More than 140 years after its establishment in 1881, the Kimberley Club remains one of the city’s great historical landmarks and one of the most tangible surviving links with the extraordinary era that transformed Kimberley from a diamond camp into a city known throughout the world.

An Uncertain Future

As of 2026, more than 140 years after the Kimberley Club was established, the future of its historic home has become uncertain. In 2026, reports that the historic Club property had been placed on the market raise questions about the financial sustainability of continuing to operate from the large historic complex. The possibility that the Club itself might relocate raises a much bigger heritage question.

Can the Kimberley Club really be separated from the building in which so much of its history took place? Its stained glass, timberwork, entrance hall, staircase, verandahs, historic dining rooms, bar, billiard room, furniture and artefacts are not simply decoration. Together they form part of the story. Some Club members have therefore argued that relocating the institution would not be the same as preserving the Kimberley Club.

For Kimberley, the issue extends beyond the survival of a private club. It concerns the future of one of the city's most important historic buildings and whether it can be preserved, maintained and given a sustainable new chapter. Whatever happens next, the Kimberley Club remains an irreplaceable part of Kimberley's heritage.