A YORK club dating back more than a century has closed for good and the site has been sold after members decided to merge it with another club.

The Bootham and Monk Ward Conservative Club in Clarence Street is set to be demolished to make way for a residential development, with the proceeds being used to invest in a major refurbishment of the Heworth Conservative Club.

The club in East Parade, Heworth, will be renamed the Heworth and Bootham Conservative Club following the merger.

Club president Roy Walker said details of the revamp were being finalised but would include moving the bar to create a larger seating area for the increased membership and new additional toilets upstairs, with disabled toilets provided downstairs.

Norman Harriss, former chair of the Bootham club, said the building had been in a deteriorating condition for many years, for example with regularly leaking ceilings.

He said membership had declined from around 400 to about 130, about 40 of whom went there on a regular basis, and it had closed last January, just before the first lockdown of the pandemic.

He said the original plan had been for a developer to knock down the building and build a new clubhouse on the ground floor, with student flats above for students from the nearby York St John University. This would not have required the provision of parking, as they were students.

However, this deal had fallen through and so he had had the idea of the merger, which would allow the site to be completely vacated to allow for redevelopment with flats, with scope for parking to be provided on part of the site.

Mr Harriss said that the merger would leave York with three Conservative clubs: the Heworth club, the Fulford District Club off Fulford Road and the Acomb & District Conservative Club in Front Street, Acomb.

They are for members of the Conservative party and are all overseen by the Association of Conservative Clubs.