A brief history of London's most legendary nightclubs - Luxury London The very social cafe upstairs, the dense dry-ice on the main floor with the mesmerising lasers, hottest guys, new bizarre sounds, the knowledge that the rest of England was sleeping and had no idea that such hedonism was taking place on a Sunday morning and night (you missed out Warriors) all fuelled after an initial polite and orderly wait in line to see Nick (is he out yet?) Taking Ecstasy for the first time and experiencing the euphoria of the blissed out Balearic beats at Space nightclub, Oakenfold and his wife Jenni came home and tried to re-create it in a 300 capacity basement gym on Southwark Street. Didnt boy george have a residency there? We use your sign-up to provide content in the ways you've consented to and improve our understanding of you. Great article and very sad reading. Hope youre healthy and happy I remember Bagleys that was a long time ago. It was hip long before Shoreditch was, and paved the way for the plethora of nightlife venues that have popped up in the area since. How weve missed it all: the overly zealous bouncers in high vis jackets by the entrance, the larcenously overpriced plastic bottles of water, the sweaty bloke in the gents toilets who rents the watered down cologne and Chupa Chups lollies concession and the DJ whose pretence of being a serious artist is such that he spends his six hour set peering down at his decks in the manner of an A Level geography student cramming for the final exam. Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. Hi Martyn! Trying to find your mates I Did the lighting and laser systems at turnmills for many different promoters. Its hours ran from 3am to 1pm on a Sunday afternoon, handily catering to the predominantly gay crowd who wanted to carry on partying after clubs like G-A-Y and Heaven closed. Anyone have a time machine so I can attend the all night Cox party or a Laurent Garnier night. 10. There was no place to hide. Many thanks Great article, and Ill second and third and fourth what has been said here. 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It was like a small amphitheatre with the DJ the absolute centre of attraction, he says. The Cross, bouncers nicking you gear *unts. 2. I discovered house music whilst on holiday in Ibiza in 1990 and after that London was the only place on my to move to list. By the 1990s gay venues across the country started to transform. Wow. Hearing those tunes led to me pestering the record shops for a record I didn;t kow the name of, who it was by but it went something like this Mmmm, mmm,mm uh-uh dah-dah! If you were staggering down the Clerkenwell Road on a Sunday afternoon at around 4pm in the early 90s then you can consider yourself a true nightclub pioneer. 18 things that happened at former top West End nightclub - MyLondon I do remember my first time in Trade and deemed it like the descent into Soddom and Gomorrah .. and there were many happy times there after!! Throughout the 90s and 00s the venue attracted party-lovers from far and wide and also played host to a number of big-name acts. London nightclubs facing 'perfect storm' of threats . All this created the friendliest and most fun crowd on the clubbing scene. Constant disagreements on how to regenerate the land behind Kings Cross Station went on for years. Plastic People, Shoreditch2000-2015The new year started with a shock for clubbers, when renowned east London bass-cave Plastic People announced it was closing, pretty much instantly. And some ex-boxer DJ? Its loyal following of drum and bass fans would flock there every Wednesday for Swerve, the legendary midweek session. . 15. But the party was brought to an abrupt end after a stabbing there led it to lose its licence and subsequent closure. Now, is that the same Tom Kihl I employed in the heady days of Covent Garden based vegetarian restaurants? Still, this wasnt the reason the venues got turfed; the bailiffs were eventually called in as a result of long overdue rent and bills. There are now just 1,733 venues compared with 3,144 in 2005 and in the last 10 years London has lost 10 top clubs. When Limelight fell out of favour as a celebrated nightspot it was sold and in 2003 became a Walkabout bar. The club on the corner of Mount Pleasant and Brownlow Hill was one of the city's most famous venues in the 90s. Anyone who is anyone has DJd there over the years (as the endless MoS series of album releases testifies), including Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong and Armand Van Helden. Fantastic times. Its the perfect lunchtime read. Sign up to our weekly email. Top R&B Clubs And Events In London | DesignMyNight In the middle years of the 60s this was the place to be seen. Best London Club and Rave Venues that are now closed This week, Boris Johnson has been considering a decision that will affect the future of London's most famous nightclub. First there was Matter and then there was Proud2. They also gave these out at the closing party in a goodie bag with a poster and a sleeping mask! A single noise complaint from posh new residents would threaten their licence and spell the end of one of the last remaining superclubs from the 1990s dance music explosion. Hilarious times. We then went our seperate ways. When the lease ran out, Turnmills left amicably, leaving the buildings owners to develop the site into an office block. Copyright 2023 London Belongs To Me Ltd|All Rights Reserved|More info: With your agreement, we and our partners (click on 'Find Out More' below for a list) use cookies or similar technologies to store, access, and process personal data like your visit on this website, IP addresses and cookie identifiers. We also ran revesceen magazeen It later became the Cat's Whiskers club, the Ritzy then Caesars Nightclub. Now the industrial area, which was once a high-density party hotspot, is the site of one of the capitals biggest modern developments. However, a thumping set and fab laser show by the master PVD at the re-invented Fridge aka Electric Brixton a while ago demonstrated, with the right amount of desire, opportunity and application it can still be done. The demise of seminal clubs like Shelleys In Stoke, Quadrant Park in Liverpool and Coventrys Eclipse should also be documented. I remember one of their selling points was drinks at pub prices. The West End night spot was based in a former chapel on Shaftsbury Avenue until its popularity declined and sadly, it was sold on and converted into a bar. Great article. As always you can unsubscribe at any time. From the Kinolibrary archive film collections. Clubs in London I Best Nightclubs | London Night Guide 59 old bars and nightclubs we wish we could bring back for one last London, became a popular lesbian bar at the end of the 1990s. Had some amazing times in those clubs, never to repeated in TBA East London warehouses. Have some great memories from that place when the people from Hooj used to celebrate their parties there. The Blitz Kids were the gang who unofficially ran the club, with members included Gary and Martin Kemp from Spandau, dance choreographer supremo-to-be Michael Clark and Siobhan Fahey (later of Bananarama). 7. Before the Millenium Dome became the O2 Arena we know today it was home to a couple of nightclub's. 9. For a year or so, this was an explosion of androgyny, increasingly bizarre and fabulous homemade fashion and lashings of clunky, proto synths. The Astor Club was a nightclub which operated in Mayfair, London from the 1930s to the late 1970s. Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right. (1989) " London Nights " is British Europop duo London Boys ' biggest hit single, released in 1989 from their debut album, The Twelve Commandments of Dance. Nick, the big bald black guy who always had a smile on his face, pretty much the master of ceremonies at Turnmills. I think the last great night I had in a bigger club was Shelter at Egg in 2005. 3. next. With a capacity of barely 200, the vibe, somehow, always kept its intimate, non-exclusive air. I (just about) have wonderful memories of all 5 of those venues. The huge venue, which filled six arches, brought a Balearic party vibe to a run-down corner of London, with club nights including Glitterati and Cheeky People. Best crowd ever! What happened to the great London nightclubs? - the Guardian The MyLondon team tells London stories for Londoners. It has St Martin's Art College in Granary Square and Thomas Heatherwick's upmarket shopping centre Coal Drops Yard.