28/08/2026
CLUB HOTEL
‘Oliver Twist’ continues his walk down Herbert Street in 1905. “And next and last on this side of Herbert Street, we land of course, on the steps of the Club Hotel that stands facing the bend in Dalrymple Creek. Even in those days the Club Hotel seemed to have a new proprietor every few months and many a man indeed has stood behind its well-worn bar.
I recall the Gorry family but even long before them, Tom Collins stays uppermost in my mind. Tom was one of the Table Top Collins, a son of old Tom if I remember correctly. And with the saleyards right in the hotel backyard, there were roaring days in the old Club Hotel when Tom Collins was behind the beer pumps”.
(Tom Collins senior was the forefather of the Edwin Cowley family, the Denis Phelan family and the Clifton Logan family).
The Club Hotel began its days in 1867 as the single-story Crown Inn with John Holmes as licensee. In the early 1880s Patrick Cranitch was the licensee and renamed it the Criterion Hotel. The lease has held by Mary Wallis for a short time in the late 1880s and she called it the Commercial Hotel.
In 1890 J. H. Gwynne bought the hotel, added the second-story section, and named it the Club Hotel. Tom Collins senior bought the hotel in 1903 and held the freehold until it was burned down in 1916.
The licensee from 1909 to 1911 was John Coll, hence Coll’s Club Hotel in the photo.
Having reached the end of the western side of Herbert Street, we will take a break from ‘Oliver Twist’ before continuing down the eastern side.