Queen Victoria's statue stood in Statue Square in front of the club until World War II.

It is said that when three Englishmen get together, they form a club. The object of a Victorian gentlemen’s club was to provide a congenial atmosphere where like-minded people could get together and chat about subjects of mutual interest over a glass of good wine and tolerable food, free from the company of their wives.

The first Hong Kong Club was opened with a grand ball on 26 May 1845. It was located at the bottom of Wyndham Street on the site where the Entertainment Building stands today. Charles Dickens’s friend Albert Smith stayed there in 1858; he was not impressed by its members. He wrote indignantly: “Tea tasting, considered as an occupation, does not call for a great employment of intellect.” He complained that “they lie in long bamboo chairs; smoke a great deal; play billiards at the club, where the click of the ball never ceases, from earliest morning: and glance vacantly over their local papers.”

It is said that the important thing about a British club is not who you let in, but who you keep out. There were complaints in 1860 about even the most eligible candidates being blackballed “with distressing frequency.” To be fair, the club was far less fussy about whom they allowed to become members than the Shanghai Club. However, Shanghai Club members would have probably been rejected by the more exclusive English clubs patronised by the British Raj.

In 1864, there was a riot on Hollywood Road that escalated into a dangerous affray between British troops and the Hong Kong Police. The Volunteers, made up of local residents from many different European nations, were called out as a third force to intervene. After restoring order, they marched triumphantly down Queen’s Road and fell out in front of the Hong Kong Club. Some Volunteers who were members invited their comrades in for a drink. This was a breach of the club rules, and when the sweat-stained visitors were ordered out of the building, there was almost another riot. It was reported that “there ensued an extraordinary amount of animosities which for a long time after this incident lacerated social life within and without the club.”

It would seem that many of the Volunteers were not “gentlemen” in the Victorian sense of the word. Almost ten per cent of the original “Ninety-Nine”, as the first batch of Volunteers were known, were proprietors of taverns. The rest were a mixed lot, ranging from blacksmiths, shipwrights and lowly artisans, up to Charles Hillier, a senior civil servant who had governed Hong Kong for a few months before it actually became a British colony. Baron Gustav von Overbeck, the honorary consul for Austria and Prussia, was also a Volunteer.

Many clubs in Hong Kong had, and still have, odd rules and regulations. The Hong Kong Club has a strict dress code. A few years ago, on his second day in the colony, the 3rd Lord Glenavy arrived outside the Hong Kong Club wearing a floral sports shirt. Standing at six feet five inches, the Irish peer was confronted by a tiny hall porter who took one look at his shirt and said, “No tie. Go please to bar at back. How are you?”

Unlike the “Ninety-Nine” Volunteers, Glenavy was absolutely delighted. He wrote for the Sunday Times under his nom de plume, Patrick Campbell. In the 1960s he was the funniest columnist on Fleet Street, and he wrote a hilarious story on his visit to Hong Kong. He later became the most unusual television star. He had a speech impediment – a stutter. Ned Sherrin who produced his first appearance on TV exclaimed: “It was an immediate success. Unanimous rave notices.”

The earlier club where Smith stayed was at the junction of Queen’s Road and Wyndham Street.