The club also owns and operates a number of climbing huts in England, Scotland, and Wales.

In 1870, C. E. Mathews founded the Society of Welsh Rabbits, which was a loose association of climbers who were largely English.

By 1897, members of the Society saw a need for something more formal, and forty met at the Café Monico in London to discuss forming a new Club.

[1] Originally perceived as merely a dining club, meeting once a year in London, one-third of the original members were also affiliated with the venerable Alpine Club - generally more conservative and populated largely by alpinists who had little regard for climbing in Great Britain, except as training for the Alps.

Not without the wry criticism so fashionable at the time, however, as the arch-conservative mountaineer Douglas Freshfield punned:[2] The Climbers' Club operates a number of climbing huts.