Following the severe floods of 1953 the low lying area of Bathside Bay Harwich was particularly affected. This brought a lot of hardship to the area and obviously affected the elderly. Shortly after this time a group of half a dozen men who regularly met for a drink on Sunday lunchtime at The Anchor public house decided to try and raise money in order to have an annual social dinner for the old age pensioners of Bathside Bay and also to give them a monetary gift at Christmas. After a few weeks one of these men stated that they must be looney doing this each Sunday and they started to call themselves The Looney Club. However even in those days there was a certain amount of political correctness so in 1958 they changed their name to The Luney Club, a luney being a small Canadian bear. The Luney Club has never failed to have a Sunday meeting even when it falls on Christmas Day.
Progress for the club was extremely slow to begin with and it went through difficult times but the Club was never short of willing workers. In 1999 following a change of licensee at The Anchor Pub it became necessary for
The Luney Club to find a change of venue as the new publican wanted to change the Anchor into a youngsters’ pub. Our Secretary approached The Harwich Branch of the Royal British Legion to see if they could use their premises and following a committee meeting it was confirmed that we would be allowed to use the Branch for two hours on a Sunday morning for our meetings and fund-raising. We then moved to The S & R Social Club, Dovercourt.
On the 1st March 2013 The Luney Club took over the old Royal British Legion building in Barrack Lane, Harwich and has renamed the building The Luney Social Club.
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