Lensbury
Encyclopedia
Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
located in Broom Road, Teddington
Teddington
Teddington is a suburban area in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in south west London, on the north bank of the River Thames, between Hampton Wick and Twickenham. It stretches inland from the River Thames to Bushy Park...
in South West 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...
. The club was founded in 1920 as a sports, leisure and social facility for Shell employees to which, over time, were added training, conference and other features.
Origins
The Lensbury Club ( “Lensbury Social and Athletic Club”) was established in 1920 as a sports club for ShellRoyal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
staff in the United Kingdom - one of the driving forces behind its formation was Dutchman Henri Deterding
Henri Deterding
Henri Wilhelm August Deterding KBE , was one of the first executives of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and for 36 years its chairman and the chairman of the combined Royal Dutch/Shell oil company. He came to power after the early death of the Royal Dutch's original leader, Jean Baptiste August...
, one of the original founders of the Royal Dutch/ Shell Group of Companies, who was a fitness fanatic. Land was acquired in Broom Road, Teddington
Teddington
Teddington is a suburban area in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in south west London, on the north bank of the River Thames, between Hampton Wick and Twickenham. It stretches inland from the River Thames to Bushy Park...
for playing fields and within a year there were active sections in Cricket, Rugby, Football, Ladies Hockey, Tennis and Chess. Between 1920 and the beginning of the Second World War significant additions to the Lensbury estate were made with property and land purchases on both sides of Broom Road. In 1933 the club merged with “Britannic House”, a similar club operated by BP
BP
BP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...
, and created a joint venture known as the “Lensbury and Britannic House Associated Clubs” – an arrangement that lasted for thirty years. In 1938 a new clubhouse was opened which comprised 162 bedrooms, a dining room, a ballroom and many other facilities. During the war years club activities were suspended and Lensbury became a Shell office and some of the sports grounds were ploughed up to grow vegetables.
Post War years
In the immediate post war years it took time for the Lensbury clubhouse to be free of its wartime role as a Shell office but by the early 1950s most of the established activities, and many new ones, were in full swing again. By 1956 membership had reached 5000 and there were 27 active sections. The arrangements with BP came to an end in 1962 and Lensbury became once again a facility exclusively for Shell employees (and those of the UK marketing joint venture Shell-Mex and BPShell-Mex and BP
Shell-Mex and BP Ltd was a British joint marketing venture between Shell and British Petroleum. It was formed in 1932 when both companies decided to merge their United Kingdom marketing operations, partly in response to the difficult economic conditions of the times.The parent organisations...
Ltd). Many new sports and pastimes were introduced including sailing, judo, ballroom dancing and keep fit and membership continued to rise reaching 7000 by 1964. Building of additional facilities for training courses took place in 1967 and the role of the Lensbury clubhouse as both a recreational and a training location was established. However financial concerns began to be expressed in the difficult economic climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the club’s structure changed so that it became a “members” club to be governed by members committees and supervised by trustees. However Shell still saw the club unequivocally as a benefit for employees, and the Lensbury continued to receive a subsidy from Shell to help cover its costs. The club became, as a consequence, more arms length from Shell with the intention that Shell’s subsidy would gradually reduce.
1970s and after
In the 1970s Lensbury had active sections in 47 sports and pastimes including Tennis, Hockey, Volleyball, Bowls, Music, Drama (Lensbury Theatre Group: http://www.apvk33.dsl.pipex.com/lenshist.shtml), Bridge, Sailing, Swimming, Motor Cruising, Sub-Aqua, Fishing as well as its core Rowing, Association Football, Cricket and Rugby Football http://www.locksiderugby.com/LockSideRugby/FE/history.asp teams. At this time membership was restricted to employees of Shell companies in the UKRoyal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
although this restriction was relaxed for some of the team sports participants.
The Yarranton years
Peter Yarranton
Sir Peter George Yarranton was chairman of the United Kingdom Sports Council from 1989 to 1994, and a notable figure in the world of rugby union, both as a player and as an administrator, for more than 40 years....
as Lensbury's General Manager. Yarranton was himself an accomplished sportsman, notably in Rugby in which sport he had been capped five times by England. An indoor swimming pool was open in the same year and under Yarranton's management the club's status as a world class sporting venue was enhanced. Membership reached 13,000 and many international sporting stars were attracted to use the club's facilities including top tennis players such as Steffi Graf
Steffi Graf
Steffi Graf is a former World No. 1 German tennis player.In total, Graf won 22 Grand Slam singles titles, second among male and female players only to Margaret Court's 24...
, Chris Evert
Chris Evert
Christine Marie "Chris" Evert is a former world number 1 professional tennis player from the United States. She won 18 Grand Slam singles championships, including a record seven championships at the French Open and a record six championships at the U.S. Open. She was the year-ending World No...
and John Lloyd
John Lloyd (tennis player)
John Lloyd is a former professional tennis player and current television commentator.During his career, he reached one Grand Slam singles final and won three Grand Slam mixed doubles titles...
during Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon, or simply Wimbledon , is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, considered by many to be the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the other three Majors...
. The Duke of Edinburgh
Duke of Edinburgh
The Duke of Edinburgh is a British royal title, named after the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, which has been conferred upon members of the British royal family only four times times since its creation in 1726...
visited the club in 1980. Middlesex County Cricket Club
Middlesex County Cricket Club
Middlesex County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Middlesex. It was announced in February 2009 that Middlesex changed their limited overs name from the Middlesex Crusaders, to the...
used the ground for some Second XI matches – a recognition of the quality of the club’s main cricket square, the home of Lensbury Cricket Club.
From 1978 until Peter Yarranton’s retirement in 1993 Lensbury continued to build on its tradition as primarily a club for team and individual sports. Yarranton himself became President of the Rugby Football Union
Rugby Football Union
The Rugby Football Union was founded in 1871 as the governing body for the sport of rugby union, and performed as the international governing body prior to the formation of the International Rugby Board in 1886...
in 1991 and Chairman of the UK Sports Council in 1989 and thus he combined his management of Lensbury with sports representation at the very highest level. It was with some pride that he described the club in 1990 as “… the largest sports, leisure, social and training centre in Europe and certainly one of the largest in the world”.
1992 to 2008
In the 1990s Shell decided that Lensbury should be seen not as exclusively a “staff benefit” but as a “profit centre”. Driven by the Shell Group's new Chairman J.S. Jennings, and implemented by the new Chairman of the Club, Clive MatherClive Mather
Clive Mather is the Chairman of Tearfund. Tearfund is an evangelical Christian relief and development agency, mobilising a global network of local churches to help eradicate poverty. Through its disaster relief capacity, it is able to bring front line emergency help to those communities ravaged by...
, changes were instituted that were designed first to reduce and then to eliminate Shell’s subsidy. This meant that the decision that had been taken in 1974 to make Lensbury a members club without direct Shell involvement was reversed and all the members committees were abolished. The club became a subsidiary like any of Shell’s other assets and like them it was defined as a business whose goal was to maximise its profits. A plan was proposed by members that would have achieved this objective whilst retaining the essential character of the club (including all the team sports) but this was rejected by the Shell directors. Instead they insisted on drastic changes to the club’s raison d’être.
Non Shell employees were sought, members’ subscriptions were substantially increased and the whole basis of the club went through a radical series of changes. Team sports, the life blood of the club since its creation, were gradually phased out and a greatly expanded gymnasium/fitness centre was introduced. The extensive playing fields on the opposite side of Broom Road to the clubhouse were disposed of and the cricket and rugby pitches on the clubhouse side were redeveloped as a pitch and putt par 3 golf course. The bowling green
Bowling green
A bowling green is a finely-laid, close-mown and rolled stretch of lawn for playing the game of lawn bowls.Before 1830, when Edwin Beard Budding invented the lawnmower, lawns were often kept cropped by grazing sheep on them...
was closed. These changes had been initially fought hard by many of Lensbury’s traditional members (particularly those in the Cricket, Rugby, Bowls and other long-established sections which were forced to disband) but to no avail.
The target market for the club changed from all Shell employees of whatever background (facilitated by nominal subscriptions) to focus on the more wealthy middle-class in the area – particularly professional couples with young families - mostly with no connections with Shell. A crèche facility was introduced. These changes were overseen by a new Chief Executive, Lesley White, a professional club/catering manger with no Shell connections or loyalties. Whereas previous heads of Lensbury (especially Peter Yarranton
Peter Yarranton
Sir Peter George Yarranton was chairman of the United Kingdom Sports Council from 1989 to 1994, and a notable figure in the world of rugby union, both as a player and as an administrator, for more than 40 years....
) were Shell careerists who understandably placed the role of Lensbury as being above all a facility for Shell employees, pensioners and connections, Ms White had no such bias. She was required by Clive Mather
Clive Mather
Clive Mather is the Chairman of Tearfund. Tearfund is an evangelical Christian relief and development agency, mobilising a global network of local churches to help eradicate poverty. Through its disaster relief capacity, it is able to bring front line emergency help to those communities ravaged by...
, with whom she worked very closely in the early years - a process that was helped by their shared ambitions and values - to make Lensbury a hard-nosed profit centre. When Ms White announced her departure from the club after sixteen years in 2008 she boasted that under her fiefdom Lensbury had been able to “…grow and flourish…” and that it was a “…magnificent 21st century club in which the values of sporting competition, social camaraderie and genuine care for members and staff continue as strongly as ever”. Others viewing this period would argue that the Shell roots of the club had been destroyed, that it was fundamentally changed from the place where Shell people could socialise together and that the sporting “progress” was in reality a calamity with the destruction of playing fields, a bowls green and other amenities and the obliteration of the old Lensbury teams and clubs that used these once fine facilities. In 2008 the Lensbury celebrated Children in Need, Genes for Jeans and Link Poverty Family Shoebox Appeal and in 2009, it acquired a Cyber coach
Cyber coach
Cyber Coach is a Virtual Dance Instructor and Dance Mat system created by Quick Controls Ltd of Bolton, UK..The system comprises a touch screen controller, a projector, sound system and some dance pads....
.
Ethos
When the official history of The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company ("A Century in Oil") was published in 1997 the author described Lensbury thus: "With a long river frontage, pleasant terraces, wide lawns, and sports courts and pitches of every sort, as well as bars, dining rooms and overnight accommodation, Shell's own comfortable and imposing country club has arguably affected staff's lives more to the good (certainly more pleasantly and much more visibly) than any figures of production...".In his book "The Thames" [2002] author David McDowall gave an independent view of Lensbury's original ethos: "The clubhouse says much about both Shell and also the ethos that was common to large companies until the last quarter of the twentieth century. There is an unmistakable statement of corporate grandeur in this typically thirties building, a visual reminder to its employees of the economic might of Shell, a hint that deference might be in order. But it was also a clear statement of Shell's expectations regarding its employees, to engage in healthy outdoor pursuits and also to socialise with work colleagues and their wives during their leisure time. One may think of these expectations as paternalistic both to employees and to their housewife spouses. But alongside such expectations, large corporations like Shell also cared about the quality of life for their staff both as individuals and as a community, a form of pastoral concern which came under intense pressure in many corporate ventures as these embraced a very much more ruthless and exploitative employment ethos from the 1980s onwards."
Ownership
Name and Logo
The name Lensbury was coined in 1920 from part of the names of Shell’s two London offices at the time which were located at St Helens Court, in Bishopsgate and at 16, Finsbury Circus also in the City of LondonCity of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
. The name took the “Lens” from “Helens” and the “bury” from “Finsbury”. For most of its existence Lensbury had a logo
Logo
A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition...
which reflected its Shell ownership and essential purpose as a benefit for Shell employees. When this purpose was changed in the 1990s the logo was also changed and today there is little or no overt sign of Shell’s ownership at the clubhouse.
Historical notes
- 'The Lensbury' is a name sometimes also given to the Bridges Handicap RaceBridges Handicap RaceThe Bridges Handicap Race is a traditional running race held in Westminster, London at 12:30 on the second Wednesday of every month. The race, often known as 'The Lensbury', is run over a course of 2.3 miles, and runners are given handicap times based on their last performance. The course begins...
, a traditional running race which starts and finishes close to Shell's Headquarters on the Albert EmbankmentAlbert EmbankmentThe Albert Embankment is a stretch of the river bank on the south side of the River Thames in Central London. It stretches approximately one mile northward from Vauxhall Bridge to Westminster Bridge, and is located in the London Borough of Lambeth.Albert Embankment is also the name given to the...
in LondonLondonLondon 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...
. - The clubhouse was badly damaged by a fire in April 1976 - rebuilding was completed in 1977.
- In addition to its Teddington clubhouse and sports grounds the Lensbury Club once also had sports and social facilities for members at Shell CentreShell CentreShell Centre, in London, United Kingdom is one of the two "central offices" of oil major Shell .Shell Centre is located on the Belvedere Road in the London Borough of Lambeth...
, Shell Mex HouseShell Mex HouseShell Mex House is situated at number 80, Strand, London, UK. The current building was built in 1930-31 on the site of the Hotel Cecil and stands behind the original facade of the Hotel and between the Adelphi and the Savoy Hotel. Broadly Art Deco in style, it was designed by the architectural...
and a boathouse for the rowing section at PutneyPutneyPutney is a district in south-west London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
. These facilities were closed in the 1990s. - Lensbury hosted Middlesex County Cricket ClubMiddlesex County Cricket ClubMiddlesex County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Middlesex. It was announced in February 2009 that Middlesex changed their limited overs name from the Middlesex Crusaders, to the...
and the county played second XI matches on Lensbury's cricket pitch between 1982 and 1998. Phil TufnellPhil TufnellPhilip Clive Roderick Tufnell is a former English cricketer turned television personality. A slow left-arm orthodox spin bowler, "Tuffers" as he was known played 42 Tests and 20 One Day International matches for England, as well as playing for Middlesex from 1986 to 2002...
, Chris CowdreyChris CowdreyChristopher Stuart "Chris" Cowdrey is an English former cricketer. Cowdrey played for Kent, Glamorgan and England as an all-rounder...
, Mark RamprakashMark RamprakashMark Ravin Ramprakash is an English cricketer, playing for Surrey and England. A right-handed batsman, he initially made his name playing for Middlesex, and was selected for England aged 21...
, Angus FraserAngus FraserAngus Robert Charles Fraser is the current Managing Director of Cricket of Middlesex County Cricket Club, and a former English cricketer and journalist....
, Chris LewisChris Lewis (cricketer)Chris Lewis is an English cricketer, who played for Nottinghamshire, Surrey and Leicestershire in the 1990s. He played in thirty two Tests and fifty three ODIs for England from 1990 to 1998.Lewis was regarded as an aggressive lower-order batsman, fine fast-medium bowler and an able all-round fielder...
and Andrew StraussAndrew StraussAndrew John Strauss, OBE is an English cricketer who plays county cricket for Middlesex County Cricket Club and is the captain of England's Test cricket team. A fluent left-handed opening batsman, Strauss favours scoring off the back foot, mostly playing cut and pull shots...
were amongst the future England international cricketers to have played at the ground.http://cricketarchive.com/Middlesex/Grounds/784.html - England's women's cricket teamEnglish women's cricket teamThe England women's cricket team played their first Test match in 1934–35, when they beat Australia 2–0 in a three-Test series. Their current captain is Charlotte Edwards, replacing Clare Connor after her five-year tenure, which she finished by leading England to their first Ashes series win since...
played a One Day International at the ground in 1979 http://www.cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/39/39235.html - A cricket match between a team of homeless men from the streets of London and a group of schoolchildren from Los Angeles took place at Lensbury in 1997 http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/73842.html
- In 2002 Shell/Lensbury proceeded with a civil law suit against former Lensbury team sport players who had sought to retain the Lensbury name for (e.g.) their Rugby team. Shell/Lensbury won the case on Trademark grounds. http://www.patent.gov.uk/tm//legal/decisions/2002/o02902.pdf
- After losing the rights to continued use of the "Lensbury" name Lensbury Rugby Football Club renamed themselves "LockSide RFC" http://www.locksiderugby.com/LockSideRugby/FE/default.asp
- The Lensbury Sub-Aqua club still continues today, as a British Sub-Aqua Club branch open to all. It has taken the other part of the original St Helens and Finsbury names that founded Lensbury, and operates as "Hellfins". http://www.hellfins.com
External links
- Mapping links: 51.4278°N 0.3186°W
- www.lensbury.com – main website
- Lensbury Conference Centre
- Shell.com – The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies