Gay & Lesbian

Standing alone at the bottom of Kennington Lane and South Lambeth Road, surrounded by a small patch of grassland, is an old Victorian pub. It doesn’t look much from the outside. A recent paintjob has smartened up the walls but can’t alter the impression that this is the last pub standing, the only venue in the area not to be redeveloped or turned into a Starbucks.

But behind these doors lies a wealth of gay cultural history. The Royal Vauxhall Tavern is London’s longest-surviving gay venue. It endured the Blitz, and the devastating impact of AIDS. It even survived the defection of its greatest star, Lily Savage, to the world of daytime television. And like all true survivors, the old girl is currently enjoying a bit of a comeback. Walk past any night of the week and you’ll hear music, laughter and possibly even the sound of a man in a wig singing ‘Maybe This Time’ by Liza Minnelli. Feature continues

Performance, and the traditions of camp and drag, have been part of the Vauxhall story from the beginning. Built in 1863, on the site once occupied by the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, the pub first became popular as a music hall venue. It wasn’t until after WWII that the cross-dressing performances began to attract a different kind of clientele, as returning servicemen rubbed shoulders with local homosexuals and the flute-like tones of gay slang Polari filled the room. One person who remembers gay life at the venue during this period is Bette Bourne. Grand dame of the radical drag theatre troupe Bloolips, currently performing with the RSC, Bourne first visited the Vauxhall in the 1950s.

‘I’d have been about 17 or 18, and I was taken there by this guy I was having a scene with, who was a dancer at the Palladium. The layout was quite different then. The bar sort of came out from the stage. There was a big thick mahogany counter which ran all the way round in a horseshoe shape, and was joined to the stage at either side. They’d serve drinks from behind the counter and you’d sit there with your drink to watch the show. And at a given point the drag queens on stage would holler and run around the counter, and you had to pick your drink up quick or it would end up on the floor.’

Not everyone came to watch the show. ‘In those days there was another bar that was screened off from the main bar with frosted glass. And that was where the straights would go. They might be builders, or ladies somewhat advanced in years, and they’d sit safely in the snug on the other side of the glass partition. But of course both bars shared the same loo, which was part of the attraction for both parties.’

For Bourne, the Vauxhall proved a happy hunting ground. ‘We were young, and we mainly went there looking for sex. And then of course the drag would come on. I hadn’t seen much drag before then. There was something very wicked and naughty about drag in those days. So it was quite underground, a great naughty secret. Later I was part of the Gay Liberation Front, and we were all committed to coming out of the closet and making things less secretive and more open. But at the time there was a certain excitement about being in a place like that, leading a double life and being part of an exclusive club. There was a song in the 1960s called “I’m In With The In Crowd”, and that’s exactly what it felt like.’