Bath & Racquets Club

The Bath & Racquets Club is located at 49 Brook's Mews in London's Mayfair district. He had previously opened the members clubs Annabel's in 1963 and Harry's Bar in 1979. The significant financial cost of opening the Bath & Racquets Club forced Birley to sell part of the wine cellar of Annabel's. In 2007 Birley sold his four Mayfair clubs, including the Bath & Racquets, to Richard Caring for £90 million. Wafic Saïd was a director of the club in the early 1990s. The club is now part of the 'Birley Clubs' owned by Caring including Annabel's, Harry's Bar, Mark's Club, and George. ==Membership==

The club opened in May 1989 with an annual membership fee of £2,000 (). In 2019 the club had c.300 members with a lengthy waiting list. The magazine executive Nicholas Coleridge was a member of the Bath & Racquets Club and would frequently meet the restaurateur David Tang there. Coleridge recalled in his memoir, The Glossy Years, that he and Tang would never "do any actual gym or go near the StairMasters or running machines" but instead spend their time at the club "sitting on a sofa eating smoked salmon and gossiping". Coleridge also agreed to meet the publicist Michael Cole in the club's steam baths to ensure that neither of them carried covert listening devices during the libel battle between Cole's employer, Mohamed Al-Fayed, and Coleridge's employers, the publishers Condé Nast. Coleridge profiled the members of the Bath & Racquets Club as consisting of "Greek shipping billionaires" and managers of hedge funds. ==Design and facilities==

The club has squash courts, a gym, steam baths, a lounge for members with a bar, and a barber's shop. It is set over two floors. The steam-rooms, showers, and urinals of the club are made from green onyx. The onyx was found in Torquay, Devon, and dates from the 1930s. The changing room was furnished with chaise longues designed by Le Corbusier upon opening in 1989. Profiling the club for ''Spear's Wealth Management Survey'', Arun Kakar described the Bath & Racquets Club as a "curious, rarefied hybrid of gentlemen's club and sport's club" which was "neither stuffy nor over-polished ... Its traditional styling is distinctively country house" and that it was "one of those special London safe havens ... detached from the frenetic city outside and yet providing something totally understanding of its culture and rhythm". Nicholas Coleridge described the interior of the club as "exactly like Annabel's with oil paintings and Turkish rugs, but with Cybex exercise machines instead of a dance floor". Aman Khan was the Bath & Racquets Club's resident professional squash player upon its opening. In 2019 the club's resident squash players included a former world No. 2 and No. 8. ==References==