The lease on the building in Eaton Square, London, used by the Irish Club has been put up for sale and the club intends moving to new, smaller premises.
The club has been at one of the most fashionable addresses in Belgravia since 1949, but no longer raises enough money to pay for the maintenance of the 17,000-square-foot building. The lease on the building still has 10 years to run and would be worth a number of million pounds sterling. It is leased from the Grosvenor Estate.
"The intention is to move to somewhere else, somewhere smaller and probably on more advantageous terms," said the secretary of the committee which runs the club, Mr Owen Murphy. "Hopefully we'll move to somewhere nearby as only the best parts of London are good enough for the Irish."
The club is open to anyone born in Ireland or of Irish descent. It has 600 members.
The club was opened in one of the most fashionable addresses in London so as to serve as a "flagship" for the Irish, according to Mr Murphy. At one stage it had two buildings "but the drink-driving legislation hit the club hard" and it sold off one of its buildings in the 1970s.
A club has a wide range of activities including bridge playing, Irish language nights, and meetings of various societies. It houses an Irish genealogical library.
"We ran a black tie event each year through all the bad years, the 1980s, when the bombs were going off and so on," said Mr Murphy. He said the club always did its best to be outgoing towards the "host community", without compromising on its commitment to Irish culture and traditions.
The club has been having difficulty paying for the maintenance of its building since the 1980s, according to Mr Murphy. The decision to close the club at the current location has been greeted with dismay by many members.
"It will be with a certain amount of sadness that we will be moving on," said Mr Murphy. "However, times change and it is time to move on." The present chairman is Mr Kevin Pakenham, son of the late Lord Longford.
