ENGLAND, U.K.
When reading the early part of this thread I was intending to give some accurate information concerning the Topic FC in Bradford, but I see thst Nicholas Waller has covered in greater detail most of what I intended to say.
The Topic has NEVER claimed to be the OLDEST club in Britain, just the longest running history since 1956. Founder member, Alex Eaton has stated thet there was at least one other London based folk club before the Topic started. The Topic also claims to be the first UK folk club OUTSIDE London.
From conversations over the years with Alex and other people (for example the late Paul "Dad" Tattersall) who attended the early Topic Folk Club , it was a very different experience compared to what we now expect. Early days were spent in a room belonging to a chinese reataurant and attendeed listened and discussed records by American singers such as Brownie McGee and Rambling Jack Elliott. The music was, as far as I can tell, predominantly Blues based. I am not sure whether anybody was already playing instruments or singing. Certainly a number were inspred to learn guitar in a blues style.
As the number of people capable of performing increased, the focus moved away from listening to recording and onto people doing their own spots, which would probably have included a lot of blues and skiffle.
I am not sure how early on somebody realised that, although they were listening to American "Folk" performances, that there was, somewhere, a lost English tradition of singing.
I myself didn't start attending the Topic until around 1976/7, but ended up on the committee between 1981 and 1986. The Ewn McColl Peggy Seeger "Aniversary" concert was probably one of the last few nights of my stint on the committee. I didn't see much of it as the room was packed to capacity and it was just easier to stay out of the way in the corridor, chatting with ex-members we thought had probably died years earlier, when not flogging raffle tickets and such duties.