Wednesday’s downpour in Stoke Newington was out of this world. Those of you who were in the neighbourhood will know just how much water came down that day.  Sadly, a huge amount of it ended up inside the Mildmay Club as our ancient pipes and guttering caved in under the strain of the water pouring down our multiple roofs.  The worst to suffer was our members members bar – the video shot just as the roofing gave way is quite extraordinary.

The team worked valiantly all afternoon to sweep the swimming pool of water out of the bar area.  It’s also flooded parts of the cellar as well, and we’ve had to turn off much of the electrics down there including the cooling and pumping systems for the beer storage. So it’s bottles and cans at the bar until the power circuits are declared safe again.

The snooker hall also flooded in parts, mainly as a result of water coming in through the rear fire doors with the sheer quantity of water from gutter pipes coming down from the main hall roof. 

The clear-up will take many days – and we’re undertaking emergency works to prevent anything like this happening again. But the job to fix our decaying roofing is a huge one that will take many months. You’ll have seen scaffolding up at the front of the building – this is all part of it, and it’s a long, slow job to repair decades of neglect to our historic building.