What a family members’ club is
A family members’ club is a private club built around children and the grown-ups who bring them — play and learning spaces for the children, somewhere to eat and sit for the adults, under one roof and one membership. London has several.
Purple Dragon in Chelsea is the original and the best-known. It opened in October 2011 at Grosvenor Waterside, and describes itself as “a club designed around family life”. Inside there is an early-years room, a music studio, an art and STEM lab, a heated pool, sports simulators, a restaurant — and a library. It has since opened clubs in New York and the Bahamas.
The evening after a big day
A day of swimming, music and climbing is a wonderful day, and it is also a very stimulating one. The fun is exactly what makes the evening harder: a child who has been busy all afternoon often arrives at bedtime wound up rather than worn out.
That is when a fixed routine earns its keep. The same bath, the same book, the same words in the same order tell a busy body that the day is over. It is what our bedtime stories for kids are built for — six steps down the Sleep Ladder, each one slower than the last — and it works just as well after a quiet day at home.
Why clubs like this exist
Family clubs are membership businesses: they have to persuade the parent who pays and delight the child who decides whether the family keeps coming. Running one well is a discipline of its own, and our sister site on club marketing looks at the other side of it — how clubs find members and keep them.
For the story side of the evening, start with short bedtime stories if the day ran late, or the parents’ page for how the whole routine works.
Facts about Purple Dragon are from its own website, checked 22 September 2026. World of Tardy has no connection with Purple Dragon.