The Westminster Ice Club

After The Great War forced Prince's Skating Club to close, well-to-do figure skaters in London, England, found their options to be quite limited. A handful of rinks, including the Hammersmith Ice Drome, Park Lane Ice Club at Grosvenor House and a rink in the basement of Albert Hall, filled the skating void. However, all of these ventures proved more or less temporary, and it wasn't until the Westminster Ice Club came along that figure skating in London enjoyed a massive revival in the late 1920s and 1930s.

The Westminster Ice Club was located on Johnson Street (now John Islip Street), just off Horseferry Road in Millbank. Though a stone's throw from the Houses of Parliament and Tate Gallery, the Club's location was somewhat unlikely, also being not far from Page Street, which then played host to a series of decaying windowless Victorian tenements and stables. The private Club was established by Sir Stephen Cortauld, a wealthy philanthropist and member of the Cortauld textiles family, and Walter Keigwin. Cortauld and Keigwin had been inspired by visits to rinks in Germany and Switzerland, and hoped to market the Club to wealthy Londoners who were "too busy to go abroad". Twenty-five thousand shares of stock were issued at one pound sterling apiece.

When the Westminster Ice Club opened on January 14, 1927, the attendance was so great that thousands were turned away. Some who made it inside stood on ladders to view the scene on the ice over the crowds. The January 15, 1927 issue of the "Birmingham Gazette" reported, "Extraordinary scenes were witnessed last evening at the opening of London's new Ice Club at Westminster, when the number of those who arrived and sought admission was so much great than the available accommodation that the building was packed before the proceedings commenced, was surrounded by a large crowd throughout the evening, and at one time people were literally swept into the entrance by the pressure from those behind. Queues of cars and taxis quickly formed all along the thoroughfares leading to the building, and the occupants, most of them attired in evening dress, alighted from their cars and proceeded on foot to the club entrance, only to find they could not obtain admission. Many holders of invitations were unable to enter the building. Women in evening dress, many of them wearing valuable jewelry, were among the crowded audience. Probably about 5,000 people were inside the building, and it is estimated that at least that number, if not more, had to go away without gaining admittance." Later, "The Bystander" speculated that one of the reasons this all happened was because "so many members interpreted their invitations as covering a quantity of friends."

Greta Midgley, Mr. Bullimore and Betty Rushby dining on the balcony on the Club's opening night in 1934.

The Westminster Ice Club had an ice surface of approximately one hundred and eighty by ninety-eight feet - comparable in size to the arena that was home to The Skating Club of Boston at the time. It was decorated in green and pink beige, with pale orange lights illuminating the ice. The Club had heated dressing rooms, a restaurant, a wine cellar and two bars, one of which was on the ground floor and dubbed The Skaters' Cocktail Bar. Fresh off the ice - and still wearing their boots - the Club's members could chat about their figures and listen to phonograph records while sipping brandy and fine scotch.

Dorothy Fane, T.D. Richardson, Miss Peel, Gerard Mitchell, Mildred Richardson and Major Hutchison at the Skaters' Cocktail Bar.

In the mornings, the rink was eerily silent while skaters practiced their school figures. In the afternoons, a full orchestra accompanied those participating in Waltz intervals. A younger crowd showed up around cocktail time and skated until dinner. The Royal Skating Club also made use of the facilities, booking the ice for intervals for their old English Style combined figures. Ice hockey and speed skating were largely frowned upon at the Club, being considered rather boorish, but the figure skaters who ruled the roost did allow curlers the use of the ice.

Captain Fairfax-Ross, Mrs. Jack Cortauld, Henning Grenander, Mr. Lloyd, Jack Cortauld, Mrs. Stephen Cortauld, an unidentified woman and Mr. Ommanney at a carnival at the Ice Club in 1929.

Like Prince's years before, the 'members only' Westminster Ice Club played host to a unique mix of legitimate figure skaters and society types who were more concerned about their outfits than their outside edges. Olympians Sonja Henie, Cecilia Colledge, Belita Jepson-Turner, Maribel Vinson, Jackie Dunn, Rosemarie Stewart and Ernest Yates, Mildred and T.D. Richardson and Mollie Phillips all skated there, as did Sir Samuel John Gurney Hoare, Lord Jellicoe and his wife and daughters, Lord Dunmore, Sir Howard d'Egville and Harry Gordon Selfridge and his family. A number of high-ranking military officials were members, including Vice-Admiral Tritton Buller and Lieutenant Commanders Sir Hugh Dawson and Ivan Davson. Lady Minto was a fixture of the Club, always spotted rinkside in her regal furs. Perhaps most famously, King George VI (then Duke of York) and Prince of Wales, the Duke of Windsor took to the ice at the Club for a game of hockey in 1929. Sir Frank Boyd Merriman, who went on to become England's Solicitor General, made the transition from society to serious skater by competing in an English Style championship at the club in 1928 and Sir Peter Markham Scott won pairs competitions with future World Professional Champion Joyce Macbeth. He so impressed respected coach Bernard Adams that he reportedly said, "If you give me your time uninterrupted for the next two years, I will make you World Champion."

Belita recalled, "At Westminster Ice Rink, Mummy used to skate with us. She got us a teacher who taught us to do edges, three turns and figure eights. Mummy used to waltz and tenstep during the dance intervals. She did them quite well. It was at Westminster, that early in my life, I first saw my future trainer. His name was Jacob Gerschwiler. In those days he had few pupils. There was one, his favourite called Cecilia Colledge, known to all as Fatty. She was as round as a small tub with a pudding basin for a head. Her hair parted in the middle and pulled into two short braids that stuck out each side of her face. Gerschwiler said she would be a champion, but to us she did not seem very good. Fatty did not like the younger children and was nasty to us all. She was three or four years older than I was. I could still not do my own boots up, so I had to go to the ladies skate room and to Number Seven. NUMBER SEVEN! Without him, there would have been fewer girls skating for Britain in future championships. He watched over us with the loving care of a mother hen. He mended our boots, screwed on and sharpened our skates; when we had finished practicing, he wiped and dried our skates, put Vaseline on them and kept our locker keys. He was divine. A round-faced, big, amiable Swedish-type Cockney, with thinning brown hair and a ruddy complexion. I never knew his name."

Claude Langdon once wrote, "Captain [T.D.] Richardson and I were entertained by [Stephen]
Courtauld one night at his club, and of course I was fascinated [by] what we saw. Some of the biggest Mayfair celebrities had been induced away from night-clubs, and in the clear, cool air of the rink were practicing the Salchow jump, the counter-cross-spin and the Axel Paulsen jump! Marples, one of the professionals of the Park Lane Club, had just come from giving private coaching to Princess Elizabeth, today our beloved Queen."

Over the years, the Westminster Ice Club's instructors included Jacques Gerschwiler, Melitta Brunner, Bernard Adams and Lady Katherine Manley. The male instructors wore black; the females a pillar-box red uniform. Howard Nicholson, the club's chief instructor, drove a Cadillac and made over two thousand pounds a year from teaching alone. He charged ten shillings for a twenty-minute lesson.

Several important Championships were decided at the Westminster Ice Club. In 1927, the National Skating Association held the first women's championship for the Martineau Cup, donated by Major Hubert Martineau, a skating judge and bobsled and cricket enthusiast. Kathleen Shaw was the winner. In 1928, the World Figure Skating Championships for women and pairs skating were attended by the King and Queen, the Duchess of York, Prince Henry and Princess Mary. The attendance of the royals generated so much attention that the police had to drive them through the crowd to the entrance! In 1929, Gillis Grafström won his third and final World title at the Club and in 1933, the Club hosted the European Figure Skating Championships.

Hookway Cowles illustration of "The Veiling Of The Sun" ice ballet.

A number of carnivals and ice pantomimes of note were also held at the Westminster Ice Club. In 1929, a carnival in aid of Mary, Countess of Minto's Indian Nursing Association and the Bird in Bush Infant Welfare Centre at Camberwell featured an egg-and-spoon race, a backwards race and tea race, as well as exhibitions by Fritzi Burger, Melitta Brunner and Ludwig Wrede, Phil Taylor and Henning

 Grenander.  A fancy dress ice carnival in aid of the National Council of Girls' Clubs in 1930 was attended by the Duchess of York.

 

In 1935, Howard Nicholson's ice ballet "The Veiling Of The Sun" received rave reviews. The Club's 1936 "Galaxy Gala" featured an ice ballet set to the music of Felix Mendelsohhn called "In The Springtime Of Love" and a daring interpretation of "Dracula", where stilt skater Herman Steinschaden performed as a bat, while his victim lay on the ice in a pool of fake blood. Freddie Tomlins, Belita Jepson-Turner, Gweneth Butler and Mollie Phillips all appeared in this production, which was attended by the Duchess of Westminster, Lord and Lady Ossory and Lord and Lady Inchcape.

Ice dancing was also tremendously popular at the Westminster Ice Club. The Foxtrot, Quickstep, Paso Doble and Argentine Tango were all invented there, as was the Westminster Waltz, first performed by Eva Keats and Erik van der Weyden in a New Dance Competition sponsored by "The Skating Times" at the Club in 1938.

The Westminster Ice Club remained a popular fixture in Millbank until 1939, when - like many rinks in the UK - it was closed due to World War II. The facility was taken over by the military for some unknown purpose, and the freezing plant was sold to the Manchester Ice Palace. In 1942, the rink's glass skylights were shattered in an air raid. The Club was later demolished, and for many years it was a car park. Today, on its site, you will find the Westminster London Curio hotel.

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