The Bath Club was a sports-themed London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 gentlemen's club

Gentlemen's club

A gentlemen's club is a members-only private club of a type originally set up by and for British upper class men in the eighteenth century, and popularised by English upper-middle class men and women in the late nineteenth century. Today, some are more open about the gender and social status of...

 in the twentieth century. It was established in 1894 at 34 Dover Street

Dover Street

Dover Street is a street in Mayfair, London, England. The street is notable for its Georgian architecture as well as the location of historic London clubs and hotels, which have been frequented by world leaders and historic figures in the arts. It also hosts a number of contemporary art galleries...

. Its swimming pool

Swimming pool

A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is a container filled with water intended for swimming or water-based recreation. There are many standard sizes; the largest is the Olympic-size swimming pool...

 was a noted feature, and it is thought that the swimming pool of the fictional Drones Club

Drones Club

The Drones Club is a recurring fictional location in the stories of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being a gentlemen's club in London. Many of his Jeeves and Blandings Castle stories feature the club or its members....

 (also on Dover Street) was based on this. Sir Henry "Chips" Channon

Henry Channon

Sir Henry "Chips" Channon was an American-born British Conservative politician, author and diarist. Channon moved to England in 1920 and became strongly anti-American, feeling that American cultural and economic views threatened traditional European and British civilisation. He wrote extensively...

 was a member. Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

 stayed here when he visited London.

The club was bombed during the Blitz

The Blitz

The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...

, in 1941, and never wholly recovered. After the bombing, it was housed by the struggling Conservative Club

Conservative Club

The Conservative Club was a London gentlemen's club, now dissolved, which was established in 1840. In 1950 it merged with the Bath Club, and was disbanded in 1981...

 at 74 St James's Street, which eventually agreed to a full merger in 1950 under the name of the Bath Club, retaining the Conservative Club's St James's Street club house until 1959. It subsequently moved to 43 Brook Street

Brook Street

Brook Street is one of the principal streets on the Grosvenor Estate in the exclusive central London district of Mayfair. It was developed in the first half of the 18th century and runs from Hanover Square to Grosvenor Square. The continuation from Grosvenor Square to Park Lane is called Upper...

, and it finally closed in 1981.