“I have had to reassure people that this isn’t the end, certainly not for our bar. We can continue to exist but we are bitterly disappointed with what has happened. Unfortuntely this room will live on only in photographs.”

Matthew Brown, TCC chairman

The Tottenham Constitutional Club (TCC), which has been established for more than a century, will lose the use of an historic billiard room and dancehall, office space and existing toilets under plans for the redevelopment of the semi-detached Georgian villa in Bruce Grove, approved on Monday night.

The building’s owners have granted the TCC a 1,000-year lease for part of the ground floor, but its chairman remains worried about its chances of survival during and after the renovation work.

The current owner, who bought the entire building in 2011, won permission to convert the upper floors into four flats while keeping the club beneath. More than 40 trees in the rear garden will also make way for a mews of four three-bedroomed houses and two four-bedroomed houses with parking spaces.

Council officers and members of Haringey’s planning sub-committee approved the plans after hearing representations from both sides.

The ageing bar of the Tottenham Constitutional Club. Picture: Tony Gay

Critics voiced concerns about cars turning onto the busy Red Route from the driveway, which will be built through the billiard room – one objector at Monday night’s planning sub-committee meeting referred to it as “an accident waiting to happen” – but Haringey’s traffic officers said it was not an issue.

Several other concerns were aired before and during the meeting. Many have objected to the loss of the billiard room, with estimates on its age varying from 50 to 300 years, but Haringey’s planning officers deemed it a price worth paying for the refurbishment of the rest of the villa, built in 1717.

Objector and chartered surveyor Philip Norvill asked the committee: “Do you really want to approve a scheme designed to produce a gated enclave of cramped, three-storey townhouses no local people will be able to afford?”

Cllr Stuart McNamara also spoke against the plan, saying it “fails to make the grade” for quality and he didn’t believe the developer’s argument that the cost of refurbishing the listed building meant it would not be viable to provide any affordable housing on the site.

The home of the Tottenham Constitutional Club in Bruce Grove is set to be redeveloped. Picture: Tony Gay

But the planning consultant for developer Islington Property Ltd told the panel that the housing was “high quality” and his client wanted to work with the TCC “as much as it possibly can”.

The houses “will be affordable to local people,” he insisted, estimating that the mews houses would be marketed at between £350,000 and £400,000 each.

TCC chairman Matthew Brown told the Journal after the meeting: “At the end of the day we are pulling all the stops out that we possibly can, and we have no intention of shutting down. We are intending to have a meeting with the developers about this to get the absolute best we can.”

He said the TCC had argued that access to the mews houses was possible from Moorefield or Sperling Road, so they didn’t have to “drive a brand new road through the front of our building”, adding: “We are still in a little bit of shellshock. We were suspicious that the council were very keen on getting this done as quickly as possible.

“A lot of our members are completely up in the air about this at the moment. I have had to reassure people that this isn’t the end, certainly not for our bar. We can continue to exist but we are bitterly disappointed with what has happened. Unfortuntely this room will live on only in photographs.” New toilets, an office and kitchen will be built for the TCC as part of the plans, but Mr Brown said it will be “like getting a quart into a pint pot”.

As part of the approved plans, the developer will have to pay Haringey Council more than £65,000 towards improvements in local transport networks and infrastructure.