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DERELICT LONDON - LONDON'S LOST MUSIC VENUES

Sorry but this page  is not quite ready yet. Its a major work in progress 

Another section that isnt entirely about dereliction but of places whose "musical heritage" is largely unknown by people who pass by these buildings. The pictures are the buildings as they are now (unless otherwise stated) plus a few odd scans of pictures that I took of gigs at these venues though we didn't all carry cameras around like we do in this digital age. 

 Much of the inspiration for creating this part of the website was of seeing all my old haunts of the 80's & 90's turn into flats, etc. Also I wanted to explore the legendary punk venues of the 70's and see what is there now. Hence this page initially has a leaning to punk and beyond but I'm particularly interested in researching earlier times esp of The Small Faces & The Who. So another area of input for all you derelict London fans!!!

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The Sir George Robey - Finsbury Park, N4
  (all pictures here are by Paul Talling 1988 -2015)

This 1870s pub was originally called The Clarence and renamed the Sir George Robey in the 1960s (named after an old English music-hall comedian).

During the late 1980s this place was the venue for any up-and-coming band with a Ford Transit on the ‘toilet circuit’ up and down the country. Folk musician Joe Giltrap ran the Robey in the early 1980s and Christy Moore, The Men They Couldn't Hang, Alien Sex Fiend, T'Pau & The Pogues were some of the acts that he hosted before leaving in 1987.

The venue continued largely unchanged into the late 1980s to the mid 1990s and acts included Hawkwind, Steve Marriott, Gong, Blur, No Doubt, Snuff and the Exploited. During this period the Robey was also  popular with promoters who hosted allday punk and ska gigs  In 1989 My old mate Roy & I hosted a punk all-weekender that was so busy that the police had to stop the crowd spilling out into traffic on the Seven Sisters Road. Everybody seemed to have a love/hate relationship with the place especially the appalling toilets. It certainly attracted great bands, but it was also none too salubrious at times – I remember watching the singer TV Smith slipping over someone’s vomit whilst onstage. The venue also staged allnighters by Club Dog which had a squat & free party vibe with its psychedelic bands crossing over with the rave scene.

Nick Hornby is said to have based the Harry Lauder music venue in the High Fidelity book on the Sir George Robey.

The Sir George Robey was taken over by the Mean Fiddler Group in the mid-1990s and renamed the Powerhaus. The venue closed down in 2004 and suffered a fire. Rebuilding started soon after but then abandoned.The building was demolished in Autumn 2015.

Meux's Original London Stout

Bar area

In August 2014 I took  a look around inside the building and I was shocked how little of the original interior still remains. The only instantly recognisable feature was the entrance where you used to come into the gigs from the front yard. Much of the area has been cleared and replaced with new girders and joists and very unstable boarding over the joists which is why I urge you not to try to enter this building as it is extremely dangerous. The main bar area is not boarded over and there is a massive drop into the waterlogged basement/cellar. The area where the stage & cellar below is all demolished and again, there is now a massive drop into an open area overgrown by buddleia with an abandoned mechanical digger overtaken by nature 

Looking out from the bar onto Seven Sisters Road

Sir George Robey 1988

Sir George Robey 2014

Cellar

Inside gig entrance

and here are some of pictures taken at the Sir George Robey. All taken in June 1989 at the punk weekender that I hosted (apart from the final pic of the Long Tall Texans which was 1990). Band playing at the punk weekender included: Splodgenessabounds, UK Subs, Culture Shock, The Abs, Guitar Gangsters (1st live gig),The Abs, Red London, The Price (with Paul Fox of The Ruts guesting on guitar), Suspect Device, Red Letter Day and many more. 

Sir George Robey almost demolished September 2015

The remains of the Robey shortly being completely flattened

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Windsor Castle – Harrow Road, W9

 
The Windsor Castle became part of the early 1970s pub rock scene and became a prolific venue for up and coming bands until the end of 1979.

Members of The 101’ers saw Dr Feelgood play here in 1974, a gig which certainly inspired singer Joe Strummer (who later went on to form The Clash), and The 101’ers would go on to play The Windsor Castle 3 times. The group was named after the nearby squat where they lived together in 101 Walterton Road. The Clash song "Protex Blue" is believed to be inspired by the brand of contraceptives available from the machine in the toilets of the Windsor Castle. The Stranglers mentioned the Windsor Castle in an interview & said that their song "Bitching" was inspired by managers of venues like this that they didn’t like.

Madness played an early gig here to virtually no audience as did the Psychedelic Furs who played a residency in 1979 though they built up a following & by the time of the last gig of the residency the place was packed out. Iron Maiden turned up to play a gig but refused to play early to a near-empty pub leading to an argument with the landlord who subsequently barred them.

Dexys Midnight Runners played their debut London gig here plus early gigs by U2, The Jam, The Ruts, The Cure plus some mod bands such as Merton Parkas, Beggar & The Small Hours.

From 1980 until closure in 2009 the pub continued to host a few live bands though no real rising stars. The pub became more popular locally for karaoke & televised sport & live strippers. New owners applied to demolish the present building & build a 5 storey hotel but permission was refused. The future of the building remains uncertain.

Roger Stanley writes: "We used to live in Elgin Avenue just around the corner from the Windsor Castle W.9, and in 1945/6? Winston Churchill did a big speech to 1000s of us from the verandah. Then we moved to: 50, Wrentham Avenue N.W.10, left there in 1969 to come to OZ. By the way, THE SMALL FACES visited 50 Wrentham Avenue,NW10 regularly to study some JAPANESE Chanting stuff, on and on. The lady running the classes was a Japanese lady married to 
a Mr. Lynch. Not many people know that!"

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101 CLUB - St Johns Hill, Battersea, SW11 

101 Club, St Johns Hill, Battersea, SW11

​For a brief few years in the very late 1970s to the early 1980s  this small basement club was an important venue on the up and coming band circuit and hosted gigs by U2, A Flock of Seagulls, Big Country, Marillion & Bauhaus. 

There was also an in-house record label backed by Polydor which released a series of albums in the early 1980s:  “Live at the 101” featuring live recordings at the club. Of the many up and coming  acts featured on the compilation albums  The Piranhas, The Fixx & Thompson Twins  were three of many bands that went on to gain chart success. 

In 1982 the 101 club hosted early King Kurt gigs (Rory their drummer worked behind the bar) and a leaving gig for a band member ended in a massive drunken food fight. This started an infamous King Kurt tradition for years to come all around the world whereby the audience brought food to gigs to throw at the band and each other.

After the 101 club closed  there is no record of any live music at   the venue. It was used mainly as a late night dance club though reached brief notoriety with national press coverage after undercover journalists exposed the place in News of the World  as hosting  swingers parties. The club, last known as Rollies, closed down a few years ago and remains empty.

The entrance doorway to the club was between two shops though on one side the shop has recently been converted into flats. Someone who worked at the old shop tells me that the club in the 1990s had quite a seedy reputation. One morning he found a blood covered knife posted through the letterbox of the shop.

STOCKWELL, SW9 - THE PLOUGH

The original settlement of Stockwell formed around here in Stockwell Green. The first part of the name derives from "stoc", the Old English word for "wood". Water was drawn from wells on the site and breweries thrived. The building of Inns and taverns naturally followed with The Plough (the original  dating back to 1666) and The Swan (circa 1780). 

The tiled Truman’s sign with the eagle roundel is that of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Company Limited - a London brewer with records stretching back as far as 1666 - the date The Plough opened! 

This building was constructed in the 1930s (by Truman's inhouse architect AE Sewell) on the site of the original Plough. During the 1960s and 70s the pub was well known all over London as a key jazz pub with live residencies. Musician Phil Seaman used to play here regularly before his death in 1972.  Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones said: “Phil was a one-off player and is probably the best drummer we’ve ever had. There’s a whole crowd of guys who were influenced by him."

It became a hip-hop bar called The Plug in the late 1990s before closing in 2002. Incidently the name change was simply because the O and the H fell off the Plough sign, hence The Plug. 

Peter writes on the BBC website: "I do miss places like the Plough in Stockwell, where you could see the likes of Keith Tippett, Chris Biscoe, Dudu Pukwana, Nick Evans and John Stevens on a weekly basis in a completely non-pretentious, inexpensive environment. There doesn't seem to be anything like that anymore, more's the pity..."

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STOCKWELL, SW9 - THE PLOUGH

CATFORD SE6 - SAVOY BALLROOM

This interesting looking building on Rushey Green was recently an Italian Furniture Shop on the ground floor and  a Rileys snooker hall upstairs. A sign for the Agape Miracle Centre Church  hangs from the building though they appear to have gone too.

The building was originally the Savoy Ballroom but during World War II  it was taken over by the  social services, providing food, drink and medicine to local schoolchildren. After the war it was known as the Savoy Rooms as a dancing and gaming club an then renamed The Witchdoctor and then Mr Smiths. The Rolling Stones (1964),Gene Vincent (1964), The Who (April 1966) & Desmond Dekker (1969) are just some of the bands who played there.

The owners of Mr Smiths, Dougie Flood (club owner) and Bill Benny (ex heavyweight wrestler, asked South London gangsters Eddie Richardson and Frankie Fraser to protect the club in exchange for gaming machines being placed there. In 1966, a fight broke out between Kray gang members and Richardson gang members in the early hours and Kray-associate Richard Hart was shot dead outside trying to escape. Mad Frankie Fraser allegedly got his nickname from his part in this fight.

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HOLLOWAY ROAD N7 - JOE MEEK

This stencil streetart by Stewy is of onetime local resident Joe Meek who lived, recorded and died in a flat a little further down Holloway Road

The first major hit to be produced his Holloway Road flat  was Johnny Remember Me,His best-remembered hit is the Tornados' "Telstar" (1962), which became the first record by a British group to reach No.1 in the US Hot 100. It also spent five weeks atop the UK singles chart, with Meek receiving an Ivor Novello Award for this production as the "Best-Selling A-Side" of 1962.

When his landlords, who lived downstairs, felt that the noise was too much, they would indicate so with a broom on the ceiling. Joe would signal his contempt by placing loudspeakers in the stairwell and turning up the volume.

His commercial success as a producer was short-lived and Meek gradually sank into debt and depression. On 3 February 1967, using a shotgun owned by musician Heinz Burt, Meek killed his landlady and then himself.

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Organ outside a restaurant in Drury Lane WC2