Patrick Comerford
We have been guests in the Sarawak Club on a number of occasions over these two weeks, having meals and drinks with family friends, academic and church contacts and many other people who have become part of our life in Kuching and who have welcomed us to Sarawak.
The Sarawak Club sits atop one of the highest points in the heart of Kuching, along Jalan Taman Budaya, formerly known as Golf Links Road. It is next to the Reservoir Park and the Museum Garden, public parks that are part of the green lung of the city. The site on the edges of old city has been the home of the Sarawak Club for almost a century, since 1927, and the Sarawak Club is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
The club officially launched its 150th anniversary programme last month (30 January 2026) with the unveiling of commemorative signage and a refreshed logo, kicking off a year of celebrations.
The Sarawak Club was first established in 1876 and is said to be one of the oldest private membership clubs in all of Malaysia. But the story of the club goes back a year earlier to 1870, when the Rajah’s Arms was established as the first ever hotel in Kuching. When the Rajah’s Arms was put up for sale in 1875 for $3,000, the Second Rajah of Sarawak, Charles Brooke (1829-1917), bought the building to use as the Sarawak Club.
Charles Brooke had succeeded his uncle Sir James Brooke as the second Rajah of Sarawak in 1868. The club was set up to cater for the entertainment and recreational needs of the officers of the white Rajahs or Brooke administration that ruled the autonomous state of Sarawak from 1841 to 1941.
The Rajah directed that all his government officers be accepted as members. The first committee members consisted of WG Brodie, manager of Sarawak Steamship Company, WM Crocker, Governor of British North Borneo, James Ines, Treasurer of Sarawak, and Dr EP Houghton, Sarawak’s Chief Medical Officer; the honorary secretary was CS Pearse.
The club was originally a men-only club for officers, and was first located on Carpenter Street at what is now the Hainan Building. The European women of the time formed a separate ladies’ club in 1896 at the corner of Khoo Huu Yeang Street and Barrack Road, and this club eventually became known as the Ranee’s Club, named after the rajah’s wife. The Kuching Social Club was formed ten years later in 1906 to cater for Europeans who were not the rajah’s officers.
From the beginning, the Sarawak Club always had extensive facilities for its members, and they included a billiard’s table and bowling alley from 1876. The club moved in 1911 to a house called ‘KMARK’, at what was then known as Rock Road (now Jalan Tun Abang Haji Openg). The new club building was formally opened by Rajah Charles Brooke. Charles Vyner Brooke (1874-1963) had succeeded as the third and last white Rajah of Sarawak in 1917, and his coronation is said to have taken place in the Sarawak Club.
In the decade that followed, the club opened the first-ever golf course in East Malaysia, established in the 1920s. The club moved to its present location on the former Golf Links Road in 1927, and the Ranee Club and the Kuching Social Club were amalgamated into a newly-constituted Sarawak Club.
The Sarawak Club was officially opened at its present site by the Tuan Muda or ‘crown prince’, Captain Bertram Willes Dayrell Brooke (1876-1965). The former club premises on Rock Road later became incorporated in the police buildings in central Kuching.
During the Japanese occupation of Sarawak, senior Japanese officers used the club, with a restaurant, billiards, and archery range and a rice storage area.
After the end of World War II, Vyner Brooke returned to Sarawak on 15 April 1946 and temporarily resumed office as Rajah until 1 July 1946, when he ceded Sarawak to the British government as a crown colony. The Sarawak Club became an exclusive domain for colonial officials and administrators in the 1950s. Ong Kee Hui became the first local person to be admitted as a member of the Sarawak Club.
Charles Vyner Brooke, the last Rajah of Sarawak, died in London on 9 May 1963, four months before Sarawak, Malaya, North Borneo and Singapore joined to form the Federation of Malaysia on 16 September 1963. Malaysia remained part of the Commonwealth, and Queen Elizabeth II visited the Sarawak Club during her visit to Kuching in March 1972.
Twenty years ago, in a fire early on 27 July 2006, almost all the Sarawak Club building was razed to the ground in fire that also destroyed most of the club’s historical records, artefacts, memorabilia and trophies. The club was fully rebuilt within a year.
The centrepiece of the Sarawak Club today is the Main Hall, the site of the coronation of Rajah Charles Vyner Brooke and part of the original clubhouse built on the site. The Main Hall is a heritage site and was restored almost entirely with the same material, including Sarawak’s belian timber in the roofing trusses, shingles and flooring. Red brick was also used in building the walls of the Main Hall.
Today, the Sarawak Club is a membership club with more than 3,000 members who come from a cross-section of Kuching City’s business, professional and civil service community. It is a family club that has kept its timeless and personal traditions yet provides its members with a variety of modern amenities and facilities, including:
• the Hornbill Restaurant
• a swimming pool
• international standard sporting facilities
• five food and beverage outlets
• meeting and conference facilities
• private functions and dinner parties
The Sarawak Club is also used for training by many squash and swimming athletes and hosted the squash and tennis competitions for the third SUKMA Games in 1990. The site of the club’s original golf course has since become the site of the Civic Centre and Kuching Amphitheatre.
The club has reciprocal relations with similar clubs around the world, including the National Liberal Club and the Oriental Club in London.
The name of the Badger Bar, where we have been guests on a few of these recent occasions, recalls a detail in the coat-of-arms of the Brooke Rajahs of Sarawak, with ‘brock’ as a pun on the family name.
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