A 101-year-old St Clair institution has disbanded, selling its premises and handing over a princely sum to charity in the process.
The St Clair Women's Club, left with just over 30 fee-paying members, has sold its meeting place to the Orphans' Club and donated $175,000 in proceeds and other funds to charities the Otago Rescue Helicopter Trust, the Otago Community Hospice and the Neurological Foundation Chair in Neurosurgery.
Interim president Lee McLauchlan, who served as president for the two years leading up to club members' decision to disband earlier this year, said the decision was difficult.
Miss McLauchlan (74) joined the club "about 20 or 24 years [ago]''.
"I never married, and it was marvellous for someone like me, in those days, to come along and not feel odd man out because you didn't have a husband.
"When I was in my 30s, you'd be looked at almost as if something was wrong with you because you didn't get married.''
If the club was, in part, a bastion for single women, that may hark back to its formation in December 1914 by women whose husbands were overseas at war.
And over the time Miss McLauchlan has been a member of the club, it has continued to cater for women such as her, who were single or alone for one reason or another.
"A lot of the women here ... their husbands have passed on. And it's still somewhere they can keep coming to. And they very much said it was a big help in the process of being on their own.''
From late March to late October, club members would meet fortnightly for entertainment organised by club members.
In recent years, the club's member base had dwindled, Miss McLauchlan said.
In the end, no-one wanted to take Miss McLauchlan's place as president, and the yearly $50 member fees were no longer enough to cover costs.
Closure was the only logical conclusion, she said.
