Building record 7203/0/77 - Windmill Club & Institute, Glassbrook Road

Working men's club designed by Frederick Preston and opened in 1928. A two-storey brick building with limestone sections and details.

{1} Windmill Club and Institute, Glassbrook Road. The Windmill Club and Institute moved to Glassbrook Road when a large club building was erected in 1927. Now a social club and snooker hall. Film 14, photo 3-4.

{2} The Windmill Club is set back from the centre of the south side of Glassbrook Road, around half a mile
north-west of Rushden town centre. The Windmill Club was founded as a working men’s club at the end of
the C19, when members met at a smaller club house around the corner on Windmill Road. The present
building was built in 1927 at a cost of over £12,000. It was designed by local architect Frederick Preston
(1865-1941) and was officially opened in March 1928. It was one of the largest working men’s clubs in the
country, having over 1,400 full members in 1954. In the late 1960s, the club was so popular that it barred
new members from outside the area or over the age of 35. The club held a wide variety of entertainments
including music, dances, comedy, political meetings and exhibitions. Live sports, such as boxing, wrestling
and snooker were regular events. In addition to events, the club had a bar, games rooms and a lending
library of over 1,000 books. The venue has been extended to the front and rear and underwent major
internal renovations in the late 1960s and again in the late C20 or early C21. The building is currently
operating as a snooker and social club.
The building is two storeys in brick with limestone sections and details. It is rectangular in plan with its
shorter ends roughly east and west and its asymmetrical façade facing north to Glassbrook Street. To the
west side, attached centrally (set back from front and rear) is an attached house for the club master. The
front elevation is nine bays wide and has two deep and two shallow projecting bays. The clay tile roof is
pitched with gables to the east and west, two smaller pitched roofs to the two deeply projecting bays to the
north, and a catslide over some of the rear southern extensions. Original windows have leaded lights, but
many of these have been replaced in the later C20. [more detail].
Social clubs like the Rushden Windmill are much-loved centres which have important community interest.
However, due to its architecturally modest design which is altered by later extensions, its relatively recent
date, and the losses to the building’s early-C20 interior, the Rushden Windmill Club does not meet the bar
required for national listing.
The Rushden Windmill Club is not considered to be of national special interest and is therefore not
recommended for statutory listing.

<1> Ballinger J., 1999, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Industrial Period, (unchecked) (Digital archive). SNN4.

<2> Historic England, 2024, Rushden Windmill Club- Reject at Initial Assessment Report, Case no: 1489553 (Report). SNN116095.

Record last edited

Feb 23 2024 4:19PM