Freeholder questions India Club's historical significance in bid to prevent leaseholder's attempt to get building 'listed'

LONDON: The freeholder of the building that houses the India Club here has submitted a report to Historic England casting doubt on its historical significance to thwart an application to get it listed as a historical building.

Marston Properties claims the India League did not meet at the India Club at 143 Strand in the 1940s and '50s and states the building "lacks sufficient special architectural and historic interest" to be included in the register of nationally protected historical buildings.

Director of Goldsand Hotels Yadgar Marker, who has run the Strand Continental Hotel which houses the India Club for 21 years, put in an application to Historic England to get the building listed on the basis it has played a pivotal role in UK-India joint history, specifically that the India Club was established in 1951 by V K Krishna Menon, independent India's first high commissioner to the UK, and became the meeting place of the India League, the organisation which campaigned for India's independence in the UK. He claims the interior remains in the same condition as it was during its occupation by the League.

Marker is hoping that by getting the building listed, it will be spared from demolition. Goldsand Hotels hold a lease of all the upper floors. Last year Marston Properties submitted plans to Westminster Council to partially demolish, extend and redevelop the building to make way for a modern hotel.

If it gets listed, listed building consent will be required for any redevelopment and the demolition of listed buildings in the UK is rare. However, in his report for Marston Properties, Nick Collins of KMHeritage, who is a former principal inspector of historic buildings, writes the India Club of 1946 was not founded at 143 the Strand and the name India Club is associated with other addresses in London.

"The India League had an office at various addresses on the Strand at various times from 1930 onwards," he claims, saying the first trade directory reference to the India Club as being located at No. 143 Strand is in 1965.

"The main period for which the original India Club was so well associated with the India League - its role in the story of the India's evolution and its high profile and influential political supporters - took place in the decades of the 1940s and 1950s - before the India Club appeared at 143 Strand. The historical importance of the building is therefore limited and unrelated to modern India's creation and early evolution," Collins writes.

Collins adds that the photographs and portraits around the walls of the restaurant "hint at an illustrious past and influential clientele" though "none of the photographs on the restaurant's walls were taken at this address".

"A photograph which purports to show Nehru and Lady Mountbatten at No. 143 Strand can be correctly attributed to the India Club at 25 Craven Street, the office of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress," Collins writes.

He argues the interior of the Hotel Strand Continental, with the exception of a few retained and reinstated fittings, "is a product of a 1964 refurbishment".

He writes the hotel lost most of its original features in that refurbishment, "leaving a utilitarian, plain hotel and restaurant".

However, the India Club disputes their claims. In their report submitted to Historic England, William Gould, professor of Indian history at Leeds University, writes that the India Club was established in 1951 and had moved to 143 Strand by the mid-1950's and that a "good proportion of the meetings of the India League" were held at the "top of a dingy staircase" of the India Club.

Gould states that the bar stools are "in many cases original" and "the first bar till in use is still present behind the bar". He also writes that some of the original marble and tiling remains and the windows have "most of their original stained glass features".

A spokeswoman for Historic England said they had submitted their confidential recommendation on the application for listing to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), in February 2018 following a consultation period and a site visit.

"The secretary of state for DCMS makes the final decision. We are currently awaiting the decision," she said.