Our Story

The journey of the Club

One weekend in the millennium year 2000, my husband, Tony Lynes, and I went for a walk along the Southbank and stumbled across the Operating Theatre of Old St Thomas’s Hospital (now Guy’s).  It was installed in 1822 in the attic of the early 18TH century hospital Church which was already used for drying herbal medicines.  We were fascinated by this discovery.  

As we walked away, Tony said there must be so many places like this in London that we had never known about.  As a lifelong social security expert and a Camberwell resident, he had already joined Southwark Pensioners’ Centre in Camberwell Road.  

The following week, he went into a meeting at the Centre and asked what people thought about setting up a Club to explore London.  He was met with an enthusiastic response and the Committee of Southwark Explorers’ Club was born.  From the outset, Tony was the driving force, organiser and leader of all the weekly outings.  In 2003, the Club became a registered charity.  Its aims are to ‘enhance the health, wellbeing and lifelong learning of older people by organising weekly visits to a wide variety of places of cultural, historic and artistic interest’. Membership steadily grew until it was in the 100s.  Although most visits were in London using our Freedom passes, I recall two coaches going to Thriplow daffodil festival several years running.

In 2010, Tony decided to step down as Secretary although he was still Treasurer in 2014 when he suddenly died.  It was very fortunate that Lesley Gibson had recently retired and became a highly efficient and committed Secretary of the Club from 2010 until 2023.  

The Club continued to develop and widen its repertoire.  Guided walks became popular. As with all societies, Covid brought an abrupt break to our activities.  All were terminated from 2020 until we slowly got going again late in 2022.  Inevitably, we had a reduced membership. However, the Club has done well to rise from the ashes and thrive again.  

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Tony had coopted me on to the Committee when I retired from fulltime work in 2011 and in Spring 2023, I took over from Lesley as Secretary.  We have a small, hardworking Committee which plans the monthly programmes and its members lead the outings. We are always looking for new recruits.  We reduced to three activities a month, sometimes four, and Southwark Pensioners’ Centre continues to be our base and starting point for most of our outings.  We greatly appreciate the supportive staff at the Centre, the photocopying they do for us and the grant funding we have received over the years from Southwark Council’s Neighbourhood Fund and from Southwark Charities.

In 2025, we have 100 members and are proud that we are a harmonious Club which represents older people from the diverse communities of our great Borough.  I have lost count of the number of members who have said that Southwark Explorers was a lifesaver for them after being widowed.

Sally Lynes