Deptford Gay Disco 1976

South East London gaysoc apparently grew out of Goldsmiths gay society and by 1976 was putting on what may have been the first 'regular gay disco' in the area - 'with upward of 60 local gays attending' -  at the Deptford Albany (then at its old building in Creek Road). 

Source: Gay News (London) March 11-24, 1976

David Shenton: Cartoons of Gay Life and Death

Space Station 65 in Kennington is currently hosting These Foolish Things, an exhibition of works by cartoonist/illustrator David Shenton. Shenton's work has been featured in the UK gay press since the late 1970s,  in publications such as Gay News and Capital Gay, as well  in a range of other papers and magazines from Positive Nation to The Guardian. 

As Graham McKerrow writes: 'Shenton's cartoons are often camp but they're not just camp, and they're not that awful apolitical offensive camp, but a light, knowing, meaningful camp; their first task is to entertain and to make the audience laugh - and often they do much more because the liberation politics that informs his work means that with the laugh there is an acerbic point - a wry observation on how we live or a satirical comment about society and a wider political context, contained in the lives and musings of plausible and likeable characters'.

David Shenton's knitted medals, featuring the lyrics of 'I Will Survive'

On a more sober note there is a series of images commemorating victims of homophobia including this one which highlights some London murders. Gerry Edwards was killed at his home in Page Heath Villas in Bromley in 2009; David Cooper was killed in Calderwood Street, Woolwich in the previous year. Edward Highwood was murdered in Hollymount Close, Greenwich. Ian Baynham (from Beckenham), was beaten to death in Trafalgar Square in 2009 by Joel Alexander (from Thornton Heath) and Ruby Thomas (from Anerley).

Space Station 65, 373 Kennington Road, SE11 

The exhibition continues until 27 July, open Thursday-Saturday 12.00–18.00 (admission free). Next week on 28th June, the artist will be giving a tour and he will also be giving a talk on the final day of the exhibition.

South London Pub News: Good and Bad

More bad news on the pub front with the closure of Lewisham's only gay bar, a threat to close a good pub in Catford, and Greenwich Council refusing permission to open a decent new pub in Woolwich, among other things. Good news is that all of these have resulted in people campaigning, with a possibility of making some real progress in some case.

Two8Six

Two8Six, Lewisham's only gay pub, is boarded up. More than a hundred people attended a public meeting to oppose the closure last month  (26 Oct) at Lewisham Town Hall, organised by Lewisham LGBTQ+ Community Involvement Group. According to Pink News (1 Nov. 2012):

'Hundreds of residents in the London Borough of Lewisham are fighting to restore a popular gay pub. The Two8Six venue, on Lewisham High Street, was recently shut after the offshore property firm, Mendoza Limited and their management company Golfrate Limited, forced the closure of the pub by sending in bailiffs and changing the locks. At an LGBT community meeting last week, Stephen Thompson, the former licensee of Two8Six, said: “[Golfrate] are claiming that they took this action because I owed them rent when in reality it was because I refused to surrender the upper floors of the building and evict my staff from their homes... This pub has been closed, not because it isn’t profitable, but because an offshore property developer with no connection or concern for Lewisham, wants to make money out of the land value of the pub and placed unreasonable demands on my business including raising the rent from £38k to £60k.”'

photo by Ewan-M at Flickr

Catford Bridge Tavern

Hundreds of people have filed objections to planning permission for a plan to close the popular Catford Bridge Tavern, SE6 (formerly the Copperfield) and replace it with a supermarket. The plan highlights the complexity of who makes decisions about the future of pubs. The pub is run by Antic, who have a Tenancy at Will  from Punch Taverns, who lease it from DVS Property Ltd. The latter have submitted the planning application to Lewisham Council.

A Lewisham Council report earlier this year reported that the number of pubs in Lewisham fell to 92 in 2011 from 145 in 2001.

The Woolwich

Meanwhile in Woolwich, local blogs such as 853 have been campaigning against the decision of Greenwich Council to refuse planning permission for Antic (who run Royal Albert in New Cross as well as Catford Bridge Tavern) to open a new pub, The Woolwich, in the town centre.  A revised planning application has been submitted and early signs are that it may have more success.

Brixton: George IV and Hootenanny

In Brixton campaigns are being waged in relation to two of my old locals from when I lived over there. Over 100 people attended a public meeting about plans to replace the George IV pub on Brixton Hill with a Tesco Express. The once popular music pub played host to early Basement Jaxx nights, not to mention me dancing to Northern Soul, but has been empty for a while. A couple of weeks ago the building was squatted by opponents of the plan.

A petition has also been launched (signed by 2500 people so far) against restrictive licensing conditions at Hootenanny on Effra Road. The music and drinking venue opens until 3 am, but are being told they cannot admit anybody until after 11 pm.  The owners say that they may have to close unless these restrictions are lifted. The venue has been a late night place for decades, in its previous incarnations as the Hobgoblin and George Canning.

Ivy House

Some good news in relation to another pub and music venue, the Ivy House in Nunhead. The pub closed earlier this year and had been put up for auction last month by the property developer who bought the building from its previous owners, Enterprise Inns. However, campaigners have successfully lobbied Southwark Council to have the building listed as an  'asset of community value' under the new Localism Act. This doesn't mean the pub has definitely been saved, but it will make it harder for the building to be used for other purposes as 'The fact that it is on the list will be treated as a 'material consideration' for planning purposes. This means that it should be taken into account by the Council in deciding a planning application (including for change of use) or an appeal against a planning decision' (see article by campaigner Tessa Blunden in The Guardian). If nothing else the decision buys time for campaigners to come up with alternative plans to get the place up and running again.

New Cross Inn

The New Cross Inn (SE14) is up for sale. Christie + Co  state that it 'has been instructed to obtain bids for a substantial freehold investment in London. The New Cross Inn is a distinctive building with Victorian features including a domed turret and arched windows. It is in a prominent position between New Cross and New Cross Gate stations.The investment is split into two distinct businesses and has recently undergone an overhaul with capital expenditure of £80,000. There is a ground floor and basement live music bar with a 10-year free-of-tie lease and a current rental income of £36,000. The upper floors are presently operated as a hostel with 80 beds, a 10-year lease and a rental income of £60,000. Christie + Co is inviting bids for the freehold investment with a guide of £1,200,000'.   There doesn't appear to any immediate any direct threat to the pub's future, but longer term that may depend on the interests and intentions of whoever ends up buying the building.

Sharley McLean: from refugee nurse at Lewisham Hospital to LGBT activist

Born Lotte Reyersbach in Germany, Sharley McLean (1923-2013) fled the Nazis and ended up in London. Her parents both died in the Holocaust (her father was a socialist, her mother was Jewish). After hearing a libertarian speaker in Hyde Park she got involved in the London anarchist scene, selling the papers Freedom and War Commentary at Speakers Corner, though she was ambivalent about their pacifism during the Second World War: 'I really saw the Nazi machinery as an evil and so I did not want to participate in anything that would detract from that'.

During the war she worked as a nurse at Lewisham hospital, as she later recalled: 'My first involvement in unions was when I was nursing at Lewisham hospital. I learned from a friend that nurses at Friern Barnet got five nights off a fortnight and we were getting only four. I heard that there was a trade union in the hospital, basically for porters and cleaners and another nurse and I got in touch. We were probably among the first nurses to join a union. You had porters who wheeled trolleys for the corpses; you had porters who looked after the rubbish. Everybody insisted on the differential and I thought that was crazy. However, we did get five nights off a fortnight.

I hated the war; we were in the frontline, all the casualties we saw. When Sandringham School was bombed, there was a tremendous anti-German feeling when those kids were brought into the hospital. It was heartbreaking: a war against children. You just worked; there was a dedication and even people with little nursing experience were called upon, to set up drips. It was all done by hand and we had a big fish kettle to sterilize things. Things were primitive compared to now and the sepsis rate was higher, and there were no wonder drugs. I was also on duty when the hospital was hit. A bomb fell on the dispensary which caused tremendous fire. As nurses we were told where there were so-called safe points and one of my friends on E Block had taken shelter at one of those points and that collapsed and she was killed outright. We were badly burned in the D Block I was in but we managed to evacuate all the patients, and people who hadn’t walked for months and months suddenly found they were able to walk down these ghastly fire escapes. At the end of the war Ruth [another refugee] and I went down Lewisham High Street and we sang every German folk song we could remember'.

Sharley (pictured above in 1941) carried on working in the NHS until she retired, and later became involved with HIV/AIDS support at the Terrence Higgins Trust as well as being a lesbian activist working for the Campaign for Homosexual Equality. Indeed her first encounters with other lesbians were while working at Lewisham in the Second World War.

'When Lewisham Hospital was bombed, we all shared rooms and even beds because the rooms were so small. We were together; we cuddled each other without giving it a second thought. I think we were naive sexually. One staff nurse would say there were two ward sisters who were 'homosexual ladies'. They used to tell people they weren't married because their boyfriends were killed in the First World War. I remember we used to look at them with curiosity. Ridiculous when you think how naive one was.

I can remember one woman in particular I had a tremendous crush on. She was a cancer patient. I was very fond of her and I was told off for being too emotionally involved when she died. Also one of the orderlies used to say to me, 'Oh, you are one of us' and I thought she meant that I was as English as she was and I felt flattered that I had been accepted'.

Source: Inventing Ourselves: Lesbian Life Stories (Routledge, 1989). The air raid on Lewisham Hospital took place in July 1944, killing at least three people. The bombed school she refers to was actually called Sandhurst Road School in Catford - 38 children were killed there in January 1943.

Update March 2022:

Sharley MacLean was given recognition in the 'Out and About' exhibition of material from the Bishopsgate Institute LGBTQ+ Archive at the Barbican Centre in Feb/March 2022. Included was a banner from 'Hyde Park Gays and Sapphics' with a sign saying that this was a group founded by Sharley in 1982 and which for more than 20 years gave speeches on gay rights at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park.

Cool Tan Largactyl Shuffle

CoolTan Arts Largactyl Shuffle walks have become a bit of a South London institution, rambling through the city at all hours, exploring lost histories (particularly relating to mental health) and promoting well-being through gentle exercise.

This weekend, to mark World Mental Health Day, they are having a special Largactyl Shuffle Sponsored Walk joined by comedian and writer Arthur Smith.

Meet outside the main entrance of the Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, SE5 8AZ at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, 15 October 2011 to join the 'Largactyl Shuffle Trail' from Camberwell to the River by Tate Modern. As this is a sponsored walk to raise funds for CoolTan Arts (mental health arts project), walkers are encouraged to register with them in advance - details here.

Earlier this year I joined their May Day walk (actually on May 21st). It started at Tate Modern and ended up with impromptu Maypole dancing with ribbons round a tree on Camberwell Green (pictured). Along the way, various May Day customs were discussed including a visit to the possible site of the former maypole by the Elephant and Castle.


As it was the week of IDAHO (International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia), members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence performed a blessing at the gates of the Cross Bones burial ground on Redcross Way SE1.

Gay New Cross

Things have moved on a bit since the 1970s, when the appearance of Gay Liberation Front activists to do a talk at Goldsmiths Gay Society ended in clashes with security guards and police (see details here). Homophobia still exists, but at least nobody much bats an eyelid when today's Goldsmiths LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer) Society put an event like next week's 'AWKWARD TURTLE: Queer Performance and Freshers Clubnight'. It's on Thursday 29th September in Goldsmiths Student Union and includes music from The Makeshifts and Holly Hayes.

At the more old school end of gay New Cross I notice that 309 New Cross Road has a new graffiti art frontage. The gay sauna there (also known as Steamworks) has generally been invisible to passers by apart from a litte rainbow flag in the door, but nobody can miss it now.
11 years ago, in June 2000, Dutch-born Jaap Bornkamp was stabbed to death in New Cross Road after leaving the sauna at 309 in what the police believed to have been an unprovoked homophobic attack. Nobody has ever been convicted of this murder. It would be nice to think that such attacks were a thing of the past, and I'm not aware of anything like this happening in New Cross since. But earlier this year, two young South Londoners were convicted of killing Ian Baynham from Beckenham in an anti-gay attack in Trafalgar Square.

Eyes Wide Open at Brockley Jack

Brockley Jack Film Club are showing the film Eyes Wide Open tomorrow night (Monday - details here) - Haim Tabakman's 2009 movie centred on the gay relationship between two Orthodox Jewish men in Israel.

Traditional Interest in Bermondsey

I've been reading the diaries of Kenneth Williams, which he kept consistently from the 1940s until his death in 1988. I must admit I found the younger Williams a more likeable character - there is a lot of self-loathing later on as he struggled with being gay (though apparently celibate for large periods), and he became a Tory.


In his earlier years he was something of a socialist, and does a great put down of a racist acquaintance: 'Lunch. J. was there. Never was she more futile and boring. 'I just don't want to mix or be friends with coloured people...' O dear! She's certainly not depriving them of anything!' (8 March 1960). Unsurprizingly he also expressed strong views about homosexuality being illegal, as it was until 1967: 'Obviously the sex life of consenting adults of same or opposite sex has nothing to do with the State' (14 january 1956 - referring to the Montagu case, and the 1954 jailing of Peter Wildeblood for 'homosexual offences'). There's the odd bit of Polari, the London theatrical/gay slang that he used to famous effect in the radio programme Round the Horne.


There a few memorable put downs of South London places in the diaries, with Croydon being summarily dismissed: 'Went to Croydon with John but didn't like Croydon, so returned straightaway (11 October 1952). In 1953 he was playing in Peter Pan at Streatham Hill Theatre: 'It looks like a great cinema of a place. Oh! Horror. I choose bus - though one can by train from town - because I hate the smells on the Southern Railway, and the grimly smug suburban feeling on those dreary green stations. And all those circumspect men with milk and sandwiches stuffed into important-looking briefcases' (29 January 1953).


However there is one South London location which he was very favourable to . His diary entry of 7 July 1958 states: 'Went to Bermondsey for traditional interest and it was quite fabulous'. The reference is to Bermondsey municipal baths on Grange Road, where the Turkish Baths were a well known gay meeting place.


Source: The Kenneth Williams Diaries (1993).

The Brixton Gay Community of the 1970's

Interesting event being put on by the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association:

'Squatting in Brixton: The Brixton Gay Community of the 1970's: A talk based on new research by Dr Matt Cook, Senior Lecturer in History, Birkbeck College .The South London Gay Liberation Front, the journal Gay Left and the Brixton Faeries were each linked to the squatting community, which in the mid 80s was absorbed into the Brixton Co-op. This talk describes the genesis and contours of the community, and explores the attempts by those involved to live differently'.

It takes place on Friday 13 March 2009, 7:30 - 9:00 pm at the Conway Hall Humanist Centre, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, London WC1 4RL (0207 242 8032).

Grrl Power

Rock 'n' Ruin are a pair of promoters putting on some excellent lesbian ‘n’ gay friendly music nights in New Cross and Camberwell which, in itself, is enough to have all good folk hugging their inner Huggy Bear fan. (The horrors of lad-indie, from the Stone Roses to the Frattelis never made the Bear go away for me.)

Ok, so She-Bop has just moved from Camberwell to Bloomsbury but we’ve still got Death by Stereo (I’ve seen Lost Boys about 20 times myself), their first-Thursday-of-the-month night at the New Cross Inn, 323 New Cross Road, to enjoy. It's free and the attitude is brilliant:

'ROCK-N-RUIN' PLAY THEIR UNIQUE MIX OF 80s ROCK, 90s NOISE, FORGOTTEN POP CLASSICS, 70s PUNK, GIRLS WITH GUITARS, BOYS WITH ATTITUDE & EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN....WE PLAY MUSIC COZ ITS GOOD NOT BECAUSE ITS COOL

Who I'd like to meet:RIOTS GRRLS, PUNKS, MODS, ROCKERS, STUDENTS, LONERS, GEEKS, FREAKS, GAY, BI, STRAIGHT OR UNDECIDED, WE DONT CARE...ANYONE AS LONG AS YOU LOVE MUSIC & WANT TO HAVE A GOOD TIME!

Thursday 7th August has three bands on, all with girl singers:
DRAG
Virgina Slint
Big Gun Baby

And thank the gods that be for MySpace so one doesn't have ot go through the painful and wanky process of having to describle what bands sound like anymore. Hurrah!

Gay Liberation Front at Goldsmiths, 1974

The Gay Liberation Front was a radical movement founded in 1970 who, among other things, started Gay Pride and organised the first open, publically advertised gay dance nights in London. In February 1974, one of the groups involved - 'the drag queens of the Bethnal Rouge Bookshop Collective' - caused a commotion in New Cross.

According to Stuart Feather's account, they 'appeared by invitation at Goldsmith College Gay Soc to give a Pre-Disco talk. They were dressed for the occasion in their best Disco Diva Drag. Whilst enjoying a pre-talk drink they were attacked by Group 4 Total Security and badly beaten up whilst Lewisham police were called and told by the same security guards that Bethnal Rouge had come to the disco to cause trouble. One queen needed hospital treatment; another who was head butted lost two front teeth. One was arrested and later that night thrown through a glass door in the police station. The rest escaped'.

More Tales From the Crypt

St Paul's Church in Deptford has recently had a major restoration project, including the crypt. Twenty years ago though the latter 'was a damp , mildewy, run down place with dirty walls and dirty floor and a dodgy loo without doors' (from here). It was also a major subcultural centre.

Pyschedelic Club

In the mid-1980s there was a regular Friday night Psychedelic club. The flyer, left, is from 1985 - note the enticement to 'Be early - people are dying to get in'. Run by Andy More, the club was more like an indoor festival featuring regular appearances from free festival favourites like The Ozric Tentacles and The Magic Mushroom Band. It became known as a place where people could drink and smoke dope all night without having to worry about the police - I am sure this had nothing to do with the promoter being an ex-policeman.

Born2Rant has posted her memories of club there on her interesting hippiecounterculture blog: 'with the dope smoke , the fantastic lightshows, the colourlful drugged up crowd dancing like maniacs, and of course the amazing music , it became a magical place. There were very few public places in London you could smoke dope safely... The Ozrics were playing and the vibe was amazing. All these girls were on stage and dancing with them... the place was packed solid and everyone was doing mad psychedelic dancing and bumping into each other under the strobes' (she also mentions there being a separate gay night in the Crypt).

Bands who played there included The Ozric Tentacles, The Magic Mushroom Band, Treatment, The TV Personalities, The Invisible Band , The Cardiacs, Space Pirates, Wooden Baby, Nukli, Mighty Lemondrops, 1000 Violins, The Trogs, The Pink Faeries, The Shamen and The Stone Roses (I was surprised by the latter but its confirmed here).

Reggae Sound Systems

In his Short History of Music in South London, John Heathcote mentions reggae sound systems playing in the Crypt. This is confirmed in William (Lez) Henry's excellent What the Deejay Said, which includes a detailed account of an early 1980s soundclash there featuring his own Ghettotone sound system, Revolutionary Hi Power and Frontline International (the latter apparently victorious after turning up with a truck load of speakers to literally blow away the opposition). He says: 'a popular venue at the time was the 'Crypt' in Deptford... where the spirits of the dead were regularly replaced by the spirits of the living-black, tomb-ravers'.

Other clubs

The Band of Holy Joy played some of their first gigs at at an early 1980s club called The Stomach Pump in the crypt. Johny Brown from the band recalls that 'the club was run by two extremely groovy guys called Slug and Chin and some of the best times of my life were had in there'. Charles Hayward's Camberwell Now also played at The Stomach Pump in November 1983, so I am guessing it was a fairly leftfield kind of place.

There were also punk gigs - anarcho-punks Virus played there in 1986. Then in 1998 there was an early acid house club Boomshanka on Saturday nights. The picture - of a Psycho's Mum gig in 1988 - gives a sense of the space.

Tell us more if you have any memories/flyers etc. Also, I believe scenes from Interview with a Vampire were filmed at St Pauls.

South London Drag

The recent post about Boy George, South East London’s best-known cross dressing icon, has got me thinking about drag. Whether Boy George was ever strictly a drag queen, as opposed to a man in a frock, is as open to question as the meaning of drag itself. As one its historians points out: 'Drag is about many things. It is about clothes and sex. It subverts the dress codes that tell us what men and women should look like in our organised society. It creates tension and releases tension, confronts and appeases. It is about role playing and questions the meaning of both gender and sexual identity. It is about anarchy and defiance. It is about men's fear of women as much as men's love of women and it is about gay identity' (Baker).

Until the 17th century, almost all actors were men so the stages of London’s South Bank were full of female impersonators like Edward Kynaston, of whom Samuel Pepys said he "made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life, only her voice not very good" (18 August 1660).

Later there was cross dressing in music hall and pantomime, particularly the role of the Pantomime dame. Dan Leno (1860-1904) was one of the most famous dames as well as the sometime Champion Clog-dancer of the world. Towards the end of his life he lived in Brixton (56 Akerman Road, SW9) and was part of the company that built the Oriental Palace of Varieties in 1896, a Camberwell music hall.

Post-Second World War drag acts 'in the noisy, smoky, crowded pubs of South London and docklands’ drag acts ‘'were joining the singers and local comics in the line-up of entertainers for a Saturday night’ (Baker). Who were these South London drag acts? Boy George mentions from his childhood (late 60s/early 70s) 'Bubbles the drag queen who ran a caff in Dulwich... Used to perform at the Valley Club in Dulwich and spent all his days dishing up sausage, egg and chips to navvies'. There was also George Pinaud, some-time Greenwich market stallholder and drag artist, who set himself up as the Pearly King of Greenwich and Deptford in 1958 (Binder).

Men like these have had a significant impact on South London in some unexpected ways. In the 1950s 'drag acts were a popular attraction in some working-class straight pubs. Some of these such as… (the) Vauxhall Tavern and Camden's Black Cap began attracting gay men in growing numbers to their shows, and by the late 1960s had slowly metamorphosed into gay pubs' (Baker). So perhaps Vauxhall’s current key position in London gay nightlife owes something to these men who weren’t afraid to put on a dress.

Sources: Drag: a history of female impersonation in the performing arts - Roger Baker (London, Cassell, 1994); Take it Like a Man: the autobiography of Boy George; Binder, Pearl, The Pearlies: a Social Record – Pearl Binder (London: Jupiter Books, 1975)