Georgian Birmingham was marked by the dramatic growth of the vigorous public sphere for the exchange of ideas that was the hallmark of enlightenment society. Most characteristic was the development of clubs, taverns and coffeehouses as places for free association, cooperation and debate, often crossing lines of social class and status. Although the exceptional historic influence of the Lunar Society of Birmingham has made it much the best-known, the contemporary William Hutton described hundreds of such associations in Birmingham with thousands of members, and the German visitor Philipp Nemnich commented late in the century that "the inhabitants of Birmingham are fonder of associations in clubs than almost any other place I know". Particularly notable examples included Freeth's Coffee House, one of the most celebrated meeting places of Georgian England; Ketley's Building Society, the world's first building society, founded at the Golden Cross in Snow Hill in 1775; the Birmingham Book Club, whose radical politics saw it nicknamed the "Jacobin Club", and which alongside other debating societies such as the Birmingham Free Debating Society and the Amicable Debating Society played a prominent role in the growing expression of popular political consciousness within the town; and the more conservative Birmingham Bean Club, a dining club uniting leading loyalist figures in the town with prominent landowners from the surrounding counties, which played a prominent role in the emergence of a distinct "Birmingham interest" in regional politics from 1774.