Among the first important buildings built in the early part of the 19th Century in the Banglore Cantonment, when the Maharaja of Mysore handed over the area of the Cantonment to the British in gratitude for the Restoration of the Monarchy in the Principality of Mysore, were the buildings of the Bangalore Club. 

The Resident, or the ‘Sole Commissioner’, lived here for some time before a permanent  Residency (Raj Bhavan) was built.  The two buildings bear a remarkable similarity.  They are both built in the European-Classical or Graeco-Roman style of architecture.

The buildings were meant to symbolise the British presence in the Principality.  Beginning with the long driveway from an imposing pair of high gate-piers, each topped with a heavily-moulded crown, leading through a part of the extensive estate to reach the stately colonnaded Portico with high Tuscan columns leading to the magnificent lounge, both the buildings were definitely designed to impress any visitor of the rank of the tenant!

The Bangalore Club buildings went into private hands but returned to the United Services in 1863 when an informal Club began which was formally inaugurated as the Bangalore United Services Club in 1868.  The Club prospered right through the Victorian Heyday  topped by the euphoric first decade of the 20th Century when in the flush of that ‘high’ the magnificent Annexe was designed and built as an Annexe to the Dovecot, the preserve of the Ladies,  and  not as an Annexe to the Club House, the preserve of the Gentlemen,  though an arboreal path thickly covered with creepers was created to link the Annexe with the Club House.  

The interior of the Annexe was designed with multiple moulded round arches which sit on heavy entablature supported by columns.  The entire ceiling is embellished with intricately executed Corinthian decorations and heavy mouldings which provide the cornice line.

The original wooden flooring is still there and the setting must have once resounded to waltz music, with wasp waisted flouncy gowned ladies doing the steps in the arms of elegantly jacketed and pantalooned guardsmen. 
General Thimayya, who was a boarder in the neighbouring Bishop Cotton School, used to stay awake and watch as the horse carriages brought the guests to the front of the Annexe.  “From his dormitory window at Bishop Cotton’s,  he could look down into the Bangalore United Services Club next door. 

Every Saturday night the Club held a great ball, which Thimayya watched as long as his eyes could stay open. 
General Sir Hore-Ruthven, the District Commander, would arrive in a carriage with his aide-de-camp and his pretty twin daughters, and the gaiety would begin. 

Thimayya longed for the day when he could participate in such gaiety. 

Not allowed!
This was not to be for along with aversion to having ladies in the Club House, aversion to ‘natives’ being made members was also quite strong.  As his biographer, Humphrey Evans reports— “A complication arose over his membership in the Bangalore United Services Club.  Thimayya had been with the regiment only a few days when the adjutant told him that he should join the Bangalore United Services Club.  Thimayya replied that he could not enter the Club because Indians were not permitted to do so.  The adjutant could not believe this until he had put up Thimayya’s name.  ‘To my surprise,’ Timmy reflected later, ‘none of the regiment’s officers knew that Indians were excluded.  Moreover, they seemed genuinely indignant about it. 

“The Commanding Officer himself went before the Club Committee to make the members change the by-laws.  He was voted down, although actually by only a small majority.  When this happened, the officers were really angry.  They told me that they had agreed to resign from the Club in protest.  Now it was my turn to protest.  Their concern touched me rather deeply, but one could not allow them to forego the fun and games the Club provided.”
Ultimately, the officers accepted his viewpoint,  but they tried to make up for his lack of the Club by seeing that he was constantly entertained.”  Lady members however seemed to have resigned to their status to being restricted to the Dovecot to which ‘Ladies and Dogs were permitted’. 

However, with the construction of the Annexe in 1907 they were given access ‘by invitation’ of the Committee. The lady members seemed to be overjoyed as they  are on record stating that they are ‘perfectly happy with this modern and elegant building and have no desire at all to enter the Club House’. 

The Annexe was built a hundred years ago.  It reflects the buoyant spirit of the age for at the end of the nineteenth century the British Empire, the largest in history, achieved a kind of fulfillment: not just of political, historical or economic ambition but of spectacle and of style. 

The Bangalore Club Annexe, which preserves the very image of the ‘permanent nineteenth century’,  was renamed as Brigadier Hill Annexe in honour of the man who literally steered the Bangalore United Services Club from a Services Club to a Civilian Club against all opposition particularly from the remnants of the old ‘die hard’ imperialist culture. 

His is a unique case of a soldier ‘staying on’ after retirement  till his demise, living in the Club and heading it as the President for  20 years till 1962.  The Annexe stands today as a permanent tribute to him.  
                                                 
 (‘The Committee may invite any lady to use the ‘Annexe’. Ladies so invited may order refreshments and incur liabilities to the Club subject to the provisions of Rule VII in so far as applicable.’).