400 years
of soho in one ploT
69 / 70 Dean st
Soho So far
The final stop of the Soho Shuffle is 69 Dean Street — in itself, a microcosm of Soho's clubland.
It has seen 3 ½ centuries of Soho keeping itself entertained, evolving from a refined Georgian residence into a game-changing 20th-century London nightspot.
Few buildings better reflect Soho's resilience, enless reinvention and uncanny ability to survive through a long, checkered history of shifting fortunes.
The physical buildings might largely have stayed the same but the people and their antics have flipped continuously. Swinging back and forth between high society, industry and society’s margins - this building has served as a sanctuary for many forms of subculture.
Built in the 1730s by John Meard- the carpenter who helped standardise the Georgian townhouse. Rumour has it that the houses were built where Charles II once housed his favourite mistress Nell Gwynne, and that a female ghost, smelling of flowers, still haunts the building.
The bright-young-things-by Cecil Beaton 1927
The bright-young-things-by Cecil Beaton 1927
A whole procession of Viscounts, Barons, Knights and Baronets lived here until 1834, when No. 69 was taken by composer and music printer Vincent Novello and his family, who lived there and ran a printing works, later extending upwards into both houses.
In 1925, it became its first club: The Gargoyle, which laid the seeds for the countercultures to come. Aristocrat and socialite David Tennant, son of the First Baron Glenconner, took a 50-year lease on the top three floors.
Tennant relaxed the era's formal dress code so that artists, poets, musicians and writers could mingle freely with aristocrats, politicians and intellectuals. Everyone entered via the same rickety external lift.
The Gargoyle became a safe haven for nonconformists and a principle social home for the "Bright Young Things" — too young to have fought in the war, this hedonistic mix of aristocrats and bohemians rebelled against rigid tradition and are often called Britain's first true youth subculture. Members included Nancy Mitford, Noël Coward, and photographer Cecil Beaton. David's brother Stephen Tennant, a leading figure of the set, was known to frequent the space in lipstick and gold dust in his hair — fifty years before New Romanticism hit the same building.
Stephen Tennant, Rex Whistler, Georgia Sitwell, and Cecil Beaton himself, William Walton having a jolly old Fête Champêtre in 1927.
National Portrait Gallery.
The interiors were equally extraordinary with designs coming from leading names; Edwin Lutyens, Augustus John and french master Henri Matisse
Tennant wasn't just building a fashionable club - he said
“it will be a chic nightclub for dancing but also an avant garde place...where people can express themselves freely in whatever manner they please “
In 1952 he sold the Gargoyle as a ‘declining concern’ but it remained a haunt of Soho’s drinkers.
Clive Jennings said of regular clientele such as Jeffrey Bernard that :
"the lethal triangle of The French, The Coach & Horses and The Colony were the staging points of the Dean Street shuffle, with occasional forays into other joints such as The Gargoyle.”
The Gargoyle’s Nell Gwynne strip club Internet Archives. &s
1955 saw it sold and relaunched as a strip club by day called the Nell Gwyne but still trading as the Gargoyle club by night.
and it kept spawning subcultures through the '70s, '80s and '90s.
The Gargoyle’s next door neighbour, The Mandrake, had described itself as "London's only Bohemian rendezvous," in the 40s and 50s- hosting lute recitals and jazz musicians( including Ronnie Scott). As it grew, its basement merged with 69 Dean Street, and by the 1970s the lease passed to a Jamaican owner who renamed it Billy's.
Vince Howard, was larger than life and one of Soho's only Black nightclub owners. He ran it as a starkly open, liberated and often rough- around-the-edges gay venue.
Then in 1978 Steve Strange and Rusty Egan met there - together they went on to run an influential Bowie night in Billy’s which led to them founding the famed Blitz Club in Covent Garden, which launched the New Romantics movement.
The Nell Gwynne 1960s at the Gargoyle -Poster internet archives.
Meanwhile, Billy's became Gossip's, and spawned yet more seminal club nights that reshaped Britain's music and fashion scene. The Gargoyle kept pulling double duty:still : the Nell Gwynne by day, and by night hosting Peter Richardson's Comedy Store on the rooftop in 1979.
In 1982 Gossip's gave birth to The Batcave the Wednesday club night that solidified the UK goth scene.
New Romantics at the Batcave 1982Jonny Slut at the Batcave by Linda Rowell.
As mentioned previously, Gossip's was also the birthplace of Gaz's Rockin' Blues, founded in 1980 before it moved to St Moritz and became London's longest-running club night.
Get Gaz’s book HERE
In 2009, The Soho House Group turned this townhouse into a nine-bedroom hotel and restaurant.
This little plot of land is representative of so many of those most influential phases of Soho’s history:
From the grandeur of the early 18th Century- built at private expense for exclusive use by the wealthy,
to the ingenuity and struggle of the industrial revolution- and its craftsmanship and musical heritage which came to define Soho in the 19th Century,
From the founding seat of the country’s most influential 20th century crazes and subcultures,
to the haunt of the most influential and fashionable artists, writers and musicians.
From Jazz-age to Surrealism
to the sexual & cultural revolutions of the 1920s, the swinging 60s and beyond,
as well as to the exuberance of Punk, the New Romantic & the Goth movements.
The building has even served as a film post production house reflecting SOho’s film industry connections.
All have emerged from these doors, and now….
Well it's a noticeable symbol of the gentrification of the area, certainly.
Saved from the grasps of high rise town planners only to be returned to private rooms for exclusive use albeit with restored Georgian features.
The irony is, that this is the first time in this building’s life when you don't (technically) have to be a friend/ member to get in…