Hiding in Plain Sight

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Hiding in Plain Sight

OLENA OLIINYK

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HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to thank my tutor, Dr Ro Spankie, for all her help and guidance throughout this project.

I would also like to thank all participants who were kind enough to share their Vauxhall stories with me.

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Hiding in Plain Sight How do urban spaces become queer?

A Vauxhall case study.

by OLENA OLIINYK University of Westminster 2022

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CONTENTS I Foreword .............................................................................................................................. 9 II Introduction .................................................................................................................... 11 III The Life and Death of the Pleasure Gardens ........................................... 17 IV Queer Vauxhall in the Twentieth Century ................................................. 32 V Fighting Gentrification of the Twenty-first Century Vauxhall ........ 47 VI Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 54 VII Appendices .................................................................................................................. 61 VIII Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 75 IX List of Illustrations .................................................................................................... 82

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“There is nothing better for a city than a dense population of angry homosexuals.1” Fran Lebowitz

1 Pretend It’s a City, “Cultural Affairs,” Netflix video, 6:36, directed by Martin Scorsese, Jan 8, 2021, https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81078137.

FOREWORD

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I FOREWORD

A personal connection to Vauxhall has inspired the subject of this dissertation.

After two years of living in the area, I became fascinated by how many people are unaware of Vauxhall’s strong ties with the queer community. Instead, an average Londoner might see Vauxhall as a transport hub of South London or as a collection of competing stacks of luxury flats that have sprouted along the river.

My interest took me to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, London’s oldest LGBTQ+ venue, hiding behind the forest of concrete and cladding. For the last 70 years, it has served as a cultural institution for the queer community. Whilst researching the pub’s history, I discovered that Vauxhall had welcomed the LGBTQ+ community since the 17th century. The quest to understand how Vauxhall maintained its deep connection with the community since the seventeenth century and the kind of spaces queer people occupied led to several fascinating interviews and uncovering intriguing clues hidden in plain sight. This specific study will expose the evolution of queer spaces in Vauxhall midst the history of LGBTQ+ rights.

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II INTRODUCTION

“If we have no history, it’s very easy for people to also claim that we shouldn’t have a present.2” Professor Pippa Catterall A man was sent from Rome to England in the late 6th century to bring Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons. He would become known as the first Archbishop of Canterbury, establishing a new chapter in medieval Britain and changing the views on sexual morality. Before St Augustine’s arrival, homosexuality was an accepted part of both Celtic and Roman life3. However, the new church laws condoned same-sex relationships and queer people were forced to learn to act straight, and to hide in plain sight.

Before all else, I believe it is essential to define the terms “queer” and “queer space”. In the United States in the 1890s the colloquial term “queer” was used as derogatory and offensive slang to address homosexual men4. In its later use, the term was reclaimed. By the 1980’s “to be queer” started to mean “denoting or relating to a sexual or gender identity that does not correspond to established 2 Pippa Catterall, “Queering Public Space | Report | Arup,” YouTube video, 9:16, posted by “Arup,” May 17, 2021, accessed Oct 24, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbRUVSSARO4&ab_ channel=Arup.

3 Gayle Gibson, “Same-sex Celts: Saint Brigid & her special friend”, Xtramagazine, Mar 16, 2005, accessed Oct 25, 2021, https://xtramagazine.com/love-sex/same-sex-celts-2-39898.

4 Oxford University Press, “queer, n.2”, OED Online, December 2021, accessed Jan 3, 2022, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/156235?rskey=VXOsMJ&result=1&isAdvanced=false.

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ideas of sexuality and gender, especially heterosexual norms5.” This term unified not only gay men and lesbians but all manner of sex or gender, including trans and other gender non-conforming people. With regards to the term “queer space”, there is no widely agreed on singular definition. However, in the autumn/ winter 2007 special issue of English Language Notes, the term ‘queer space’ was defined as “nonnormative locales that are physical, social, and constituted by and through social relations, as well as non-exclusionary and nonhomogeneous locations that are largely or exclusively theoretical constructs (such as virtual spaces)6.” Widely it is understood as a space occupied by queer and marginalised people. The queer space is the collective creation of queer people on a scale of the ‘closet’, the monument, the building, the street, the neighbourhood or even the city.

Although the world is considerably more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community nowadays, much queer heritage is still widely unknown. History surrounds us in our present through monuments, plaques, buildings, and neighbourhoods, telling the tales of those who came before us. Our public memory is built on these visual symbols, which indicate what we find significant. However, this history is very filtered; what gets preserved is heavily influenced by those who exercise power over the planning and architecture of our cities. People in authority have the power to choose who gets to be celebrated. This results in a biased representation, as only one out of five statues in the UK are of women. Even then, these women are predominantly depicted as semi-naked and nameless7. Monuments celebrating LGBTQ+ history are even rarer. For example, Oscar Wilde’s and Virginia Woolf’s monuments and building plaques often do not mention their sexual orientation, despite its significance to their work and life story. A notable positive change happened in 2015 when Historic England granted a Grade II listed status to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern (the RVT) to recognise its significance to the LGBTQ+ community’s history. This recognition has started a revolution in celebrating queer history in the UK. However, despite the RVT’s listed status, most of the heteronormative public is unaware of Vauxhall’s LGBTQ+ importance.

When I first moved to the area, I immediately recognised Vauxhall as a queer neighbourhood. Being a bisexual immigrant from Eastern Europe, I had a ‘sixth sense’, a skill of instantly assessing the settings around me for my safety. Seeing the façade of the RVT with Pride flags in each arch made me feel like I belonged.

It is a small gesture, but it makes all the difference for the intended people. It showed I was welcomed. After all, according to the Office of National Statistics 5 Oxford University Press, “queer, adj.1”, OED Online, December 2021, accessed Jan 3, 2022, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/156236?rskey=1fiPDo&result=2&isAdvanced=false.

6 Jane Garrity, “Mapping Queer Space,” English Language Notes 45.2, Fall/Winter (2007), 2.

7 Arup, University of Westminster, Queering Public Space (London: Arup, 2021), 8, accessed Oct 24, 2021, https://www.arup.com/perspectives/publications/research/section/queering-public-space.

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Fig. 1 Illustrations of the blue plaques commemorating Oscar Wilde and Virginia Wolf. by the author

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data between 2013-158, Lambeth borough with Vauxhall at the centre of it has the highest gay, lesbian and bi population in the whole of the UK. So, the queer history of Vauxhall and, more specifically, the RVT became a focus of my research. In 2020 I wrote an essay “Art of Hiding in Plain Sight: Why did Vauxhall maintain the deep connection to queer pleasure established during the infamous Pleasure Gardens 1785 to 1859?”, which was exhibited during the Pride Month at the Roca Gallery in London as a part of Designing Out exhibition curated by Architecture LGBTQ The essay was my first step towards this dissertation.

As a queer person, I wanted to understand what makes Vauxhall a queer space and how it has retained its connection with the community over time. In this dissertation, I will trace the queer history of Vauxhall from its origins as the seventeenth-century Pleasure Gardens to the present day to understand what made this area suitable for the LGBTQ+ community to settle. It was essential to connect the history of the slow societal acceptance from when homosexuality was actively prosecuted to recent years and its effects on spaces occupied by LGBTQ+ people. Queer spaces are becoming more visible, but there is still the danger of discrimination and hate crimes against LGBTQ+ groups. Through my research, I have question how queer spaces hide in plain sight, how they adapt through time and whether it is safe for queer architecture to ‘come out’.

Methodology and Structure The dissertation relied on social, politicised, and personal histories overlaid together with personal writing. As queer theory is a relatively new subject in architecture, it mainly intersects with the social history of queer people within urban and, to a lesser extent, suburban settings. Therefore, it was essential to reach out to the local LGBTQ+ community and hear about their experiences.

To collect intimate stories of Vauxhall, I conducted a series of interviews with people living and working in the area. This helped to uncover authentic stories and opinions. More interviews with prominent drag artists and queer residents and visitors of Vauxhall were available on the archived online creative research project Happy Birthday RVT by artist collective Re-Dock.

Due to the nature of the subject, a lot of the research material was also hidden in plain sight. After extensive primary and secondary research, I gathered material from various sources, some of which were rather unconventional. One of the main texts was the work of Judith Butler, a key figure in the queer theory of gender performativity. In her 1990’s book Gender Trouble: Feminism and 8 “Subnational sexual identity estimates, UK: 2013 to 2015”, ONS, Apr 19, 2017, accessed on Oct 24, 2021, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/sexuality/articles/subnationalsexualidentityestimates/uk2013to2015#toc.

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the Subversion of Identity, Butler argued that gender, like sexuality, was not a fundamental truth obtained from one’s body but something that is acted out and portrayed as reality. She made a case that gender performativity could manifest the act of resistance and rebellion with the example of drag and cross-dressing.

Another essential source was Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire by Aaron Betsky. While most of the research on queer theory happens in cultural studies, social geography and arts, this publication was the first attempt to bridge architecture and queer theory. Betsky offered familiar gay tropes like ‘the closet’, ‘the interior’ and ‘the nightclub’ as the ultimate spaces of queer identities.

Despite being a fundamental publication in queer architectural theory, the book presents a subjective view of a middle-class gay man. The overwhelming majority of historical records often focus on famous ‘elites’ and white gay men. Lesbian, bisexual, trans and other stories of working-class and ethnically diverse people remain largely unrecorded. The only historical records of working-class queer people could be found in the police records during their arrests. As the law never prosecuted female homosexuality, minimal clues such as legislative, criminal and reform records are available to make women’s histories more visible. The Bishopsgate Institute’s Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive (LAGNA) houses over 200,000 cuttings taken from the non-gay press on LGBTQ+ matters since the late nineteenth century. The newspaper clippings showed the media depiction of queer people in the 80s and 90s, discussing Lambeth council’s position through the end of the twentieth century, the AIDS epidemic and the country-wide government policies relating to queer equality.

This dissertation is divided into three chapters, chronologically following the historical development of Vauxhall. The first chapter starts with the Vauxhall Spring Gardens in 1661 and their subsequent evolution into the infamous Pleasure Gardens under the direction of Jonathan Tyers. The Gardens were mentioned in several major literate works, such as Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens and Vanity Fair by William Thackeray. Despite being fictional, the stories give an accurate depiction from the perspective of avid visitors. David Coke’s and Alan Borg’s book Vauxhall Gardens. A History extensively covers the ever-changing atmosphere of the Gardens over two centuries. However, the book mentions very little about the gardens’ queer history. To find more details, I found a copy of the RVT’s Historic England application with all supplement documents produced

by Ben Walters, uncovering the story of Princess Seraphina, the UK’s first widely known drag queen. While being interviewed for the application research, David Coke shared the stories of John Cooper and his drag persona of Princess Seraphina. Then, searching through the National Archives, I came across a transcript of the proceedings of the 1732 trial, when Thomas Gordon was indicted

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for assaulting Cooper. The chapter finishes with the closure of the Gardens after several decades of decline and the opening of the RVT. This chapter assesses the whole area of the Gardens as a queer space, with more specific emphasis on the dark walks as a cruising area.

The second chapter focuses on the RVT’s role as an anchor of the queer community from the 1950s to the 1990s. This section discusses how the interiors were adapted to host drag performances and how the space functioned from the personal recollections of the artists and visitors. The second half of the twentieth century was a turbulent time for LGBTQ+ people fighting for equality. This section uses primary sources found in LAGNA archives and other sources such as the government documents, documentary films What a Girl Like You… and Rebel Dykes, personal interviews and autobiographies. In addition, I investigated various London’s queer geography and social history sources, such as Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society by Frank Mort and Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 by Matt Houlbrook. These books helped me to understand the historic queer scene in London better by describing important but widely unknown queer sightings.

Finally, the evolution of queer space in the form of the singular building is discussed and how Vauxhall adapted to the needs of the queer community.

The final chapter evaluates the influence of the gentrification of Vauxhall on the migration of LGBTQ+ people. Queer spaces in London are disappearing. Using the interviews with a member of the Tonic Housing organisation, Vauxhall’s residents and visitors, the Queering Public Space study by Arup and the University of Westminster and Dr Ben Campkin’s research LGBTQI Nightlife in London from 1986 to the present, this section analyses the current state of Vauxhall as a queer neighbourhood and speculates on the future of queer spaces.

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HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT Fig. 2 Vauxhall Garden

by Thomas Rowlandson, 1809

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE PLEASURE GARDENS

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III THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE PLEASURE GARDENS

“Imagine to yourself … a spacious garden, part laid out in delightful walks, bounded with high hedges and trees, and paved with gravel; part exhibiting a wonderful assemblage of the most picturesque and striking objects, pavilions, lodges, groves, grottoes, lawns, temples and cascades; porticoes, colonnades, and rotundas; adorned with pillars, statues, and paintings: the whole illuminated with an infinite number of lamps, disposed of in different figures of suns, stars, and constellations; the place crowded with the gayest company, ranging through those blissful shades, or supping in different lodges on cold collations, enlivened with mirth, freedom, and good humour, and animated by an excellent band of music.9” Modern-day Vauxhall, with its always busy railway station on top of the nineteenth-century brick viaduct and slick stainless-steel bus terminal, bears almost no resemblance to its historical counterpart. Widely known now for its bleak Vauxhall Cross, loathed by both motorists stuck in the unavoidable traffic, and pedestrians fearing for their lives while crossing roads, the area once attracted visitors from all over the world to enjoy the ‘exotic taste’ of London’s prime entertainment venue. As some of the private parks owned by the Royal Family and aristocracy became open to the broader public after the Civil War, new green spaces appeared in London. Initially known for being a relatively modest venue, the Gardens are believed to have existed prior to the Restoration of 166010. While the Spring Gardens were not that different from other gardens 9 Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (London: W. Johnson & B. Collins, 1771, Project Gutenberg, 2016), chap. 32, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2160/2160-h/2160-h.htm.

10 David Coke and Alan Borg, Vauxhall Gardens. A History (London: Yale University Press, 2011), 18,

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Fig. 3 Fragment of John Rocque’s Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1749

Fig. 4 Entrance to Vauxhall Tea Gardens, c.1780

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and parks in London, they began their transformation to a global phenomenon in the early eighteenth century under the ownership of Jonathan Tyers. His background was in the London leather industry, and his family was successful enough to own several properties. Tyers took complete control of the Gardens in 1729. He challenged the status quo of the society of his time, where only the wealthy upper class had access to pleasure and culture, while the rest had to suffer from the never-ending grind with no right to gratifying and enjoyable things. The entrance was open for everyone who could pay a shilling at the gates.

Tyers transformed the Spring Gardens into a paradise, where the British public started to embrace “new hedonism”, which promoted “both individual sensory gratification”11 (drinking, eating and sex) and “more convivial practices”12 such as the shared enjoyment of theatre and public spectacles. A shift in public morality allowed queer culture to thrive in the Gardens.

At the beginning of Tyers’ reign over the Gardens, the site resembled more of a heavily planted park, a rectangle filled mainly with elm, lime, and sycamore with a few walks organised in a grid. With their timid popularity, the Spring Gardens were perceived as a rural escape from London. From 1735 to 1750, Tyers set out to rebuild the Gardens to suit his ideals of pleasure. One of the first buildings he commissioned was the Prince of Wales’s Pavilion. It was a classically inspired Kentian with a portico of four Doric columns, situated adjacent to the previously existing Proprietor’s House, the main entrance to the Vauxhall Gardens. The orchestra, the organ building, the Rotunda and three ‘piazzas’ of supper-boxes were added to the new layout inside the Gardens. The architecture was replaced, altered, and extended regularly. Elements were often reused to keep up with everchanging trends. Most of the buildings were built initially with repetition of the classical elements, but each alteration attempted to make the elevations more exotic.

Of the three ‘piazzas’, the ‘Temple of Domus’ in the northern range of the supperboxes experienced the most well-documented changes. In 1748-49, it was initially constructed in the predominantly classical style. The colonnade of ionic columns supported a straight entablature, topped with urn finials; the semicircle flowed in a smooth curve out of the straight colonnade of the northern range of supperboxes. However, the classical order was interrupted by a peculiar central pavilion, almost circular in plan. The pavilion’s main quirk was the subversion of the basic classical structure by the elaborate, overpowering Gothic detailing. “The apparent breaking of architectural rules, mingling different styles in the same building, was deliberate and entirely typical of the unorthodox design of the 11 Josephine Kane, The Architecture of Pleasure: British Amusement parks 1900-1939 (Farham: Ashgate, 2013), 192.

12 Ibid.

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Fig. 5 A View of the Temple of Domus &c. in Vauxhall Gardens, J. S. Muller, 1751

Fig. 6 A View of Chinese Pavilions and Boxes in Vaux Hall Gardens, T. Bowles, c.1840

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English Rococo, which aimed to create playful light-hearted works.13” Two years later, the pavilion was remodelled, with new Gothic decorations flowing from the central dome to the rest of the structure. It became known as the ‘Chinese Pavilions’. The name reflected the architectural anarchy and the deliberate misuse of the symbolic detailing rather than the proper use of any Chinese elements. Juxtaposing elements from different styles and cities, the Gardens created a place out of this world, it was different and magical, where the rules of heteronormative London life did not apply and could be broken.

The architecture inside the Gardens was strikingly different to the architecture on the Gardens’ boundaries. The elevations overlooking the ordinary world were more reserved, while the buildings inside were akin to the guests at the masquerade, hiding their real London identities behind the mask of the rich, exotic detailing. The central elements of the garden, with the unorthodox marriage of various architectural elements in one building, were an ideal backdrop for the social performance. The early masquerades at the Pleasure Gardens were critical in establishing Vauxhall as the most alluring attraction in London. With the core belief that pleasure is a basic human right, the events welcomed all walks of life to participate in the shared irresistible fantasy. Everyone could be part of the spectacle; the tension between hiding and being seen was the most seductive element. The characters of a sailor, a friar, a Merry-Andrew, a Quacker, a Grecian, a Persian monarch, a nun, a ballad seller, and a milkmaid were all guests at the Ridotto al Fresco, a big masquerade event of 1732. Even cross-dressing mollies14 were welcomed. Although homosexuality was seen to have “surpassed all other crimes15,” and mollies’ mimicry of women, particularly speech and dress, was depicted as a degeneration from masculinity16 in the eighteenth century, the Gardens were the stomping ground for molly cross-dressing culture, the predecessor of the modern drag. In Butler’s view, any gender is an act of performance that constructs the social fiction of its psychological interiority17.

The masked identity is no different from the masquerade persona. If one believed in the milkmaid’s innocence, one also accepted the cross-dressing homosexuals.

“The transvestite’s gender is as fully real as anyone whose performance complies with social expectations.18” The masquerade was a lucid dream that allowed visitors to be themselves safely behind the masks. Everyone would revel in an inquisitive and hedonistic kind of pleasure.

13 Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens. A History, 69.

14 The 18th-century term for ‘gay men’.

15 Ian McCormick, Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writing (Hove: Psychology Press, 1997), 119.

16 Ibid.

17 Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990), 279 18 Ibid, 278.

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Fig. 7 A Map of Vauxhall Gardens, 1841

Fig. 8 The Milkmaid’s Garland, or Humours of May Day by, Francis Hayman, 1741-1742

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John Cooper, widely known as Princess Seraphina, one of the most renowned molly culture figures, was a frequent guest at the Gardens. “She was the first recognisable drag queen in English history. That is, the first gay man for whom dragging up was an integral part of his identity and who was well known by all his neighbours as a drag queen. Everyone called him Princess Seraphina, even when he was not wearing women’s clothes.19” On May 29th, 1732, Thomas Gordon stole Cooper’s clothes and jewellery at knifepoint in modern-day Chelsea.

During the court hearing, it was revealed to the public that Cooper was “one of them as you call Molly Culls20” and a ‘sodomite’, forcefully outing him, but he was not punished and walked out free. He was addressed as ‘Seraphina’ by most witnesses. According to Butler: “Within speech act theory, a performative is that discursive practice that enacts or produces that which it names.21” As the court would refer to Cooper as his molly persona, they accepted Cooper’s gender performativity as Seraphina. Despite the common contempt and homophobia, John Cooper received much respect from the visitors of the Gardens. The case of Princess Seraphina shows that the Gardens were a queer accepting space. The rules of masquerading in the Vauxhall Gardens allowed certain sexual freedom for homosexuals at the time.

The Druid’s and the Dark Walks were unlit avenues of the Gardens, where wilder things were allowed to happen. Thackeray described them in Vanity Fair as “the dark walks, so favourable to the interviews of young lovers22”. The said lovers were not always heterosexual. The walks are now regarded as the prime cruising area for homosexual men and women. Betsky describes such dark alleys as the first queer spaces of the modern era. It was a space with no set borders; it could not be seen and did not exist beyond the sexual act. Such cruising spaces show that there is no need in a specific design for queer space to encourage relationships; it is a space that appears when they are least expected, then disappear into the darkness, only to reappear at the right circumstances23.

Betsky describes queer space as “useless, amoral, and sensual space that lives only in and for experience… a space of pure artifice.24” The Vauxhall Gardens, being known for its brothel, were famous for allowing amoral behaviours to take place. Sexual freedom was intrinsic to the gardens; Vauxhall came to life at 19 David Coke, interviewed by Ben Walters, cited in Supporting statement for an application to have the Royal Vauxhall Tavern added to the National Heritage list for England, Jan 2015, accessed on Oct 24 2021, http://www.rvt.community/read-our-application-to-make-the-tavern-a-listed-building/.

20 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Trial of Thomas Gordon (t17320705-30), July 5, 1732, accessed on Oct 24, 2021, https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17320705-30&div=t1732070530&terms=john_cooper#highlight.

21 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993), 13.

22 William Thackeray, Vanity Fair (Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 1983), 63 23 Aaron Betsky, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire (New York : William Morrow & Co, 1997), 141.

24 Ibid, 3.

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night when visitors wandered in the Gardens’ ephemerality. Betsky also noted how a queer space helps to “avoid some of the imprisoning characteristics of the modern city.25” Before the nineteenth century, Vauxhall, despite its geographical proximity, could not have been more remote from London. Just north of the river, there was a filthy city, where one had to follow the rules and the codes, but a boat trip across the Thames instantly brought you into a rural paradise. The river was a threshold between the traditionalism of London and the sexual escapism of Vauxhall. Moral, sexual and gender norms could be tested. Men were allowed to express themselves in a more feminine manner, while women had the chance to control their sexuality, albeit to a lesser extent than men. The moral codes were more flexible here. However, despite Vauxhall’s more liberal sexual attitudes, queer people were never entirely safe and would have been prosecuted. Even if it was not an exclusively queer space, the architecture of the Pleasure Gardens showed the adaptability of a queer space with liminal and transient qualities between the boundaries of the heteronormative world.

“And here—most striking object of all—on the site where thousands of lights once sparkled; where sweet sounds of music made night tuneful till morning dawned; where the beauty and fashion of London feasted and danced through the summer seasons of a century—spreads, at this day, an awful wilderness of mud and rubbish; the deserted dead body of Vauxhall Gardens mouldering in the open air.26” On July 25th, 1859, the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens hosted their last celebration under the patronage of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the Royal Family. The reporter of The Times described it as “the pathetic ceremony of leave-taking … is more like a goodbye addressed to the ghost of some friend who has been dead for years than a farewell uttered to the friend himself.27” In its last decade, the Gardens failed to compete with the Great Exhibition to appeal to the fancies of the Victorian middle class. The hedonistic version of the rural idyll, so seductive to earlier visitors, was not enough for the changed London society. The public’s perception of pleasure changed in the nineteenth century, and Victorian reformers were alarmed by the popular cultures promoting the sensory pleasures of drinking and sex. Hedonism re-earned its lousy reputation. The Pleasure Gardens were surpassed by exhibitions, museums, and department stores. As a result, the Gardens were sold for building and development. The only structure on site to survive from the period of the Gardens is a house adjoining the St. Peter’s church, originally built for the widow of Jonathan Tyers the younger.

Although the architecture of the Gardens did not survive, the buildings played an important role in the development of British architecture in the eighteenth 25 Betsky, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire, 3.

26 Wilkie Collins, No Name (London : Electric Book Co, 2001), 297.

27 The Times (July 26 1859) as cited in Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens. A History, 355.

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century. It was an opportunity to be experimental and playful by bringing together the architectural elements that rarely had been seen before.

The much-valued property was quickly redeveloped to create mass housing for the working class. With the new housing came two schools, an art school and St Peter’s Church, which still stands on the former gardens’ ground today.

By the 1870s, Vauxhall was an industrial area dominated by depots, gas works and distilleries, with the London and Southwestern railway cutting through the heart of the area, giving the area a transit feel. The first finished building, the new beacon of leisure of this area, was the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Situated on the edge of Upper Kennington Road, it would be easily spotted by anyone arriving at the Vauxhall station, as it was located at the gateway of the new development.

The construction work is estimated to have started between 1860 and 1862; the building architect might have been James Edmeston the elder, who was involved in the planning redevelopment28. The striking mid-Victorian façade established the pub’s presence on the street front. Four Italianate brickwork arches distinguished the RVT from two terraced housing rows.

The ruins of the Pleasure Gardens were quickly auctioned off bit by bit after their closure. The catalogue for one of the auctions on August 22nd, 1859, of the “Fixtures, Fittings, Plant, and Building Materials of the Royal Gardens, Vauxhall” lists sixty-one iron columns. Six exterior and six interior ornamentally decorated iron columns of the RVT may be the last surviving architecture from the inside of the Pleasure Gardens. As the layout of the RVT is very typical for the corner pubs of the Victorian terraces, with the internal columns allowing for more open sitting areas, the potential reuse of the columns was primarily practical. However, unintentionally this gesture could be interpreted as a bittersweet bridge between the past and present pleasures of Vauxhall, with walls of the tavern gently wrapping the remnants of London’s most elaborate parties to protect the memory of them. The queer pleasure moved inside to hide from the no longer inviting London crowd.

It is almost impossible to establish the exact year when the RVT gained a regular LGBTQ+ clientele, as most of the history of the queer community was either purposely destroyed or unwritten, as unmasking your true self was an illicit and dangerous affair in the UK up until the 2000s. After World War II, a small sauna run by queer men opened on the Vauxhall Bridge Road. It was a “fairly unlikely place [with] no sign outside or anything.29” Hiding behind a familiar facade was key to survival. Architecture would help ‘playing it straight’. Queer 28 Historic England, “Royal Vauxhall Tavern”, Sep 8, 2015, accessed Oct 24, 2021, https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1426984?section=official-listing.

29 Matt Houlbrook, Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis 1918-1957 (London:University of Chicago Press, 2005), 98.

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Fig. 9, 10 Advertisement Posters for the Last Night in Vauxhall Gardens, 1859

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Fig. 11 The Last Surviving Building from the Gardens’ complex, by the author

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Fig. 12 The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, by the author

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Fig. 13 A Cover of “ A Catalogue of Valuable Fixtures, Fittings and Building Materials...”, 1859

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men would have to learn to share the information safely, so the message reached those for whom it was intended. A lot of masked queer guides to London were published and distributed inconspicuously. One such guide, the 1930’s For Your Convenience by Paul Fry, shares eccentrically encoded information about public loos in London, where gay men could meet each other for sex. The illustrated map focuses mainly on Central London and abruptly cuts south of the Lambeth Bridge, not reaching Vauxhall. There is an indication that there was one of the public toilets on the Vauxhall Bridge Road and that a few places in the North Lambeth and Waterloo were used. Sometime after World War II, the RVT started to welcome gay clientele to Vauxhall, becoming an underground destination for gay men looking for a night out. Located on an arterial route, the pub brought together people from different cities and counties. There is a close association between queer spaces and former or existing transport infrastructure30. Perhaps, the aesthetic mirroring of the railway arches would help future hiding in plain sight. The conscious mimicry of the neighbouring viaducts would visually mark the building as a future queer space for all the forthcoming visitors.

30 Ben Campkin, “Lunch Hour Lectures: London’s Queer Infrastructure,” YouTube video, 21:35, posted by “UCL Minds Lunch Hour Lectures,” April 27, 2021, accessed Dec 29, 2021, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=wnwKSemQBjM&ab_channel=UCLMindsLunchHourLectures.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE PLEASURE GARDENS

Fig. 14 For Your Convenience Map, 1930’s

31

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IV QUEER VAUXHALL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

After World War II, the country witnessed a significant rise in the number of arrests of gay men31. Neither a high rank nor a position within government or national institutions could save queer men from prosecution, as in the case of Alan Turing, the cryptographer whose efforts helped break the Enigma code and end World War II, but could not save him from being chemically castrated32.

Such a surge of incarceration led to a call for an enquiry into the legality of homosexuality and prostitution. In August 1954, the Wolfenden Committee was set up by the Government to investigate the concerns. Their 1957 report attracted a large amount of publicity, proposing that there “must remain a realm of private morality and immorality which is, in brief, and crude terms, not the law’s business33” and recommended that homosexual acts between two consenting adults in privacy should no longer be a criminal offence. After several attempts for reform, the Sexual Offences Act received Royal Assent on the 21st of July 1967. The law permitted homosexual acts between two consenting adults over the age of twenty-one. However, the emphasis on domestic privacy went hand in hand with a complementary suppression of manifestations of public gay life. The law intended to push homosexual men back into their homely ‘closets’, hiding from the public, which was considered susceptible to moral corruption.

Queer spaces hid behind plain façades and blacked-out windows. Early spaces depended heavily on barriers and labyrinthine space, occupying the edges of 31 Gay women were never prosecuted by law in the UK, despite an attempt to include a section in the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1921 to make ‘acts of gross indecency’ illegal between women, but the section was defeated by the House of Lords and never became the law.

32 He committed suicide soon after the prosecution.

33 UK Parliament, “Wolfenden Report”, accessed Oct 29, 2021, https://xtramagazine.com/lovesex/same-sex-celts-2-39898.

QUEER VAUXHALL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

33

town34.

In the 1950s, the RVT started to have its first queer clientele. To provide a haven for people running away from the prohibited public spaces, the ground floor of the RVT was divided into three bars. One was catering predominantly to market traders and truckers who “claimed to be straight35”, one for women only and the other welcomed openly queer customers. Still, all sides shared the same toilets, where men and women from both bars could meet. The queer right side became known as the ‘Palladium of Drag’ in the 1960s36, where people could see a variety of drag artists performing on the stage. Behind the blackout windows, it was safe to express yourself. The drag lured various audiences, not just queer folk. The British public seemed to have a more relaxed attitude towards cross-dressing with its historical connection to the Shakespearean performances by all-male casts and widely loved pantomime dames. People might have understood it differently; for some, it was merely a revival of the most medieval theatre, whilst others saw progress to a more permissive society mocking the gender binary of heterosexual norms37.

The pub was never designed to stage live performances, but queer space is always adaptive and flexible, as it was never permanent before. As Christopher Reed argued in his essay Imminent Domain, “queer space is renovated space.38” There was a small stage with a piano at the end of the bar in the far corner of the room.

Artists would often use the shoehorn shaped bar following the Gardens’ columns as a stage to entertain large crowds in the pub. Taking and claiming space is a fundamental part of queering it. Reused columns were always part of the performance, engaging the crowd with the history of masquerades and pleasures of Vauxhall. Queerness and renovation were always connected. Renovation and adaptive reuse transform what the mainstream culture has abandoned, so that old and new are juxtaposed. The transformations could be read as a form of camp, which has been defined as “the reclamation (often through nostalgia) of what has been devalued in a way that exposes (often through exaggeration and incongruity) the structure of assumptions undergirding normative values.39” Camp became synonymous with drag and queer culture. Drag artists would create costumes from old dresses bought in charity shops and redesign them to suit the performance.

34 Aaron Betsky, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire, 156.

35 Stuart Feather, “Stuart Feather describes the RVT in the 1960’s,” YouTube video, 1:26, posted by “Re-Dock,” May 6, 2014, accessed Dec 28, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnwKSemQBjM&ab_channel=UCLMindsLunchHourLectures.

36 What a Girl Like You…, directed by Charlie Squires (London Weekend Television, 1969), film, 3:00.

37 What a Girl Like You…, 3:06.

38 Christopher Reed, “Imminent Domain: Queer Space in the Built Environment,” Art Journal Vol. 55, No. 4 (1996), 67.

39 Reed, “Imminent Domain: Queer Space in the Built Environment,” 68.

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“Straight” “Queer”

“Female Only”

Fig. 15 Diagram of the RVT Ground Floor Plan in the 1960’s, by the author

QUEER VAUXHALL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Fig. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 Stills from What a Girl Like You…, 1969

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Fig. 22 The Polka Dots out of Drag, by the author

“- Where do you get your clothes?

- Some I have made. The fabulous ones I have made, of course. A lot I buy from Oxfam stalls, jumble sales, wherever they are going really.

- Most of the stuff I do is all as I say comedy, so I can get away with any old tut that any-one throws out.40” The Polka Dots

40

What a Girl Like You…, 13:16

QUEER VAUXHALL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

37

The practicality of adaptive reuse is at the heart of queer culture. It helps to create vernacular architecture that visually represents the values of the community, constantly evolving but never forgetting the past. After facing so much scrutiny, the queer community never lost their wit and humour in their art of self-expression. Camp was loud and ironic; camp was dancing on the bar top in redesigned woman dresses and high wigs; camp was eighteenth-century pillar columns inside the gay Victorian pub. The ‘Palladium of Drag’ evoked nostalgic feelings of the long-gone Vauxhall Gardens, celebrating hedonistic pleasure in the house of artifice.

In the 1970s, tension was growing among the oppressed queer community, and LGBTQ+ people started coming out of the closet and into the streets, protesting and breaking down barriers. The Gay Liberation Front, started by a group of students at the London School of Economics, organised the first London Pride march on 1 July 1972, which became an annual event. Inspired by the Stonewall riot in New York in 1969, the protest was held from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square London. Bigoted terms like ‘gay’ were reclaimed with slogans like ‘Glad to be Gay’ and ‘Gay is good’ in early Pride marches41. These protests created a temporary queer space, reclaiming the public space in London, which had been denied to the LGBTQ+ community for so long. Simply holding hands or kissing your loved ones in public was a way to protest. Drag became a political statement.

“As soon as you put on the drag, that was immediately personal, and people wanted to know why you were wearing drag and who did you think you were, and it was down to the short and curlies very quickly.42” Stuart Feather In 1979 the RVT tore down its glass-etched barriers separating the ‘women only’ right section from the ‘straight’ central section and the ‘queer’ section. The bar was moved to the side and the stage altered in shape. A raised seating platform was created against the curved wall at the front of the RVT. The ‘sexual apartheid’ was over. However, despite the welcoming atmosphere and mixed nights, the venue catered to a predominantly male crowd.

In the early 1980s, homosexual men in London started to be affected by a mysterious disease. The lack of widely spread knowledge about the origins, transmission and symptoms of HIV and AIDS caused the public to panic and this ushered queer people deeper into the shadows. The tabloid media used 41 “The First Gay Pride in London 1972”, My Learning, accessed Nov 13, 2021, https://www. mylearning.org/stories/proud-the-first-gay-pride-in-london/1431.

42 Stuart Feather, “Stuart Feather on the politics of drag,” YouTube video, 4:32, posted by “ReDock,” June 18, 2014, accessed Dec 28, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnwKSemQBjM&ab_ channel=UCLMindsLunchHourLectures.

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Fig. 23 Stuart Feather, by the author

QUEER VAUXHALL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Fig. 24 Diagram of the RVT Ground Floor Plan in the 1980’s, by the author

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the outbreak to demonise gay and bisexual men with headlines like “Gay virus plague”, “I’d shoot my son if he has AIDS, says vicar,” and “Gay plague agony”43.

Princess Diana, the former member of the world’s most famous heteronormative family, was one of the key figures who challenged public fears of HIV transmission.

The highly publicised pictures of her hugging and shaking hands with the HIV/ AIDS patients showed the nation that one cannot get infected through day-today contact. She was also one of the most unexpected guests of the RVT at that time. One night, while watching the Golden Girls with Cleo Rocos, Kenny Everett and Freddie Mercury, Diana heard them talking about the plans to go to the RVT.

“Diana said that she had never heard of it and she’d like to come too. Now, this was not a good idea… But it was clear that Diana was in full mischief mode…

She just wanted the thrill of going in, undetected.44” The princess was safely snuck to the party, wearing military and leather garb with dark glasses. Then, as if taken back to the gardens’ times, the royal could hide her identity behind a mask to enjoy the pleasures of Vauxhall.

Betsky claimed in his book that “AIDS destroyed queer space,45” because the epidemic made the community aware of the “self-destructive nature of the very notion of artifice.46” In his opinion, queer space became a heavily guarded and decorated void; “it was this emptiness that killed queer culture.47” However, the RVT’s survival story showed that queer space could evolve from the ‘house of artifice and bodily pleasure’ into a permanent cultural institution. In the early days of the AIDS crisis, the RVT was a safe space to find help and support. Many people involved with fundraising and counselling would come and spend their evenings there. However, not all queer venues were as welcoming and open to discuss the tragedy. Other venues tried to avoid talking about politics and AIDS, instead pretending it was not real and having a good time.

“Earl’s Court gay scene seemed to be more in denial about the whole thing while South London agreed that people should do something about that.48” Vauxhall was one of the first places where people would collect donations. A lot of regular faces started to disappear. People saw the RVT, the biggest venue in 43 Ella Braidwood, “‘Gay plague’: The vile, horrific and inhumane way the media reported the AIDS crisis”, Pink News, Nov 30, 2018, accessed Oct 30, 2021, https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/11/30/ world-aids-day-1980s-headlines-tabloids/.

44 Cleo Rocos, The Power of Positive Drinking (London: Square Peg, 2013), p.44.

45 Betsky, Queer Space, 180.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid, 182.

48 Rupert Smith, “Rupert Smith - The Vauxhall at the early time of the aids crisis,” YouTube video, 1:16, posted by “Re-Dock,” July 5, 2014, accessed Dec 28, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=mpHf_UOKX_4&ab_channel=Re-Dock.

QUEER VAUXHALL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Fig. 25 Princess Diana, by the author

Fig. 26, 27 The Newspaper Clipping from the 1980’s

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Vauxhall, as Lambeth’s campaign headquarters. When the space was first raided by the police, with law enforcement officers wearing gloves and masks, for fear of catching HIV via air and touch, it felt like a strategic assault. From the perspective of the police, the war on HIV/AIDS was a war on gay men. Infiltrating the main base seemed like an easy way to win this war. The general public had a growing discontent towards queer spaces, fuelled by the media depiction of the LGBTQ+ community.

“You were dealing with a level of both casual homophobia just all the time and also state-sponsored homophobia: the police and the media and the government, a constant barrage of hatred with a big capital H. So to go into this absolute knockdown ramshackle old pub with all of these extraordinary people like you having come from all over London, and then to have this magnificent queen [on stage] going, ‘It’s all right to be unemployed. F***’ em…’

It was meat and drink. It was lifeblood… and that’s why the Vauxhall Tavern was important. To turn all that misery and hardship around with that much panache and sheer bloody nerve!49” Queer space is the space of resilience. Despite breaking down the doors to their physical space, the police could not break the community’s spirit. Performing acts at that time, including Lily Savage and Adrella, were both the weapon and the remedy. They would come to the stage every night telling jokes and keeping people’s spirits high, despite living through the same horrors. After the set, Lily Savage would go to the AIDS wards still in drag to help on the drugs rounds and entertain the troops50.

“We were the Vera Lynns of South London!51” Lily Savage The queer community stood their ground to protect its spaces. Vauxhall evolved from an ephemeral queer cruising destination to a permanent queer neighbourhood. The area came out of the closet, only to be shortly shoved back in. In 1988 Thatcher’s government enacted Section 28 of the Local Government Act. The law was brought to prohibit the promotion of homosexuality by the local authorities.

49 Neil Bartlett speaking at Duckie’s Vauxhall Bacchanal all-day event, Southbank Centre, August 10, 2013 as cited by Ben Walters, Supporting Statement for an Application to Have the Royal Vauxhall Tavern Added to the National Heritage List for England, Jan 2015, accessed on Oct 24 2021, http://www.rvt.community/read-our-application-to-make-the-tavern-a-listed-building/.

50 Rupert Smith.2014.

51 Paul O’Grady, “Paul O’Grady remembers the RVT Police raids,” YouTube video, 0:23, posted by “Re-Dock,” June 11, 2014, accessed Dec 28, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBzmbWLmaQI&ab_channel=Re-Dock.

QUEER VAUXHALL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Fig. 28 Lily Savage in and out of Drag (Paul O’Grady), by the author

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Fig. 29 Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool, by the author

Fig. 30, 31 Rebel Dykes gatecrashing the BBC, 1988

QUEER VAUXHALL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

45

“Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay… All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life—yes cheated.52” Margaret Thatcher Teachers could not mention non-traditional family values at school or even protect queer kids from being bullied. Despite its long-standing support, Lambeth Council was now more limited in the kind of help they could provide.

South London lesbian group ‘Rebel Dykes’, famous regulars at Vauxhall’s Chain Reaction night at the Market Tavern, protested against the law by gatecrashing a live BBC broadcast and chaining themselves under the table53. Despite numerous mass protests during the following decade, Section 28 was only removed in 2003.

In the 1990s, Vauxhall became a new post-industrial pleasure garden of London, where in-stead of rural greenery, people explore the left-over warehouses and disused railway arches in the pursuit of joy and bliss. Until the mid-1990s, sex clubs were frequently raided by the police, but soon after, the situation changed, and the police started to turn a blind eye to sex in commercial places54. As a result, many of the venues moved south of the Thames. Lambeth police appeared to be less stringent, making the borough more alluring for the club venues. While Soho became increasingly commercialised and cleaned-up, Vauxhall increased in notoriety, with the media describing a night-out in Vauxhall as “a death wish.55” With this growing ‘underground’ fame, the area welcomed even more risqué pleasure-seekers. The Market Tavern, the second most famous club in Vauxhall in the 80s and 90s, used to be located on the ground floor of the brutalist highrise, housed the first lesbian BDSM night. The ‘under-ground’ dance club Crash and the S&M venue Hoist would occupy the arches. The queer cabaret night Duckie took over the RVT in 1995. Amy Lamé, the club hostess, wrote an article for The Times, celebrating the dirt, darkness, and historic hedonism of Vauxhall:

“Under the cover of darkness, Vauxhall may be squalid, sordid, dilapidated, mysterious and tatty. But I can think of no other corner of London - or indeed these isles - where hedonists from all walks of life converge in such fierce pursuit of pleasure. Hogarth, Dickens and Pepys did the same in their day.56” The period of rapid industrialisation was one reason for the Pleasure Gardens’ 52 Margaret Thatcher, “Speech to Conservative Party Conference”, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, Oct 9, 1987, accessed Dec 10, 2021, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106941.

53 Rebel Dykes, directed by Harri Shanahan and Siân A. Williams (Riot Production, 2021), film.

54 Johan Andersson, “Vauxhall’s Post-industrial Pleasure Gardens: ‘Death Wish’ and Hedonism in 21st-century London,” Urban Studies Vol. 48, No. 1 (2011), 90.

55 Ibid, 93.

56 Amy Lamé, “ Acres of pleasure,” The Times, Feb 21, 2003, 18.

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decline in the eighteenth century. However, queer space managed to survive in the industrialised Vauxhall and thrive in its post-industrial setting. This fullcircle moment demonstrated a possibility for a space to remain queer through generations. Vauxhall’s intangible queer heritage is intrinsic; and some of the oral stories of queer folk have survived into the twenty-first century.

FIGHTING GENTRIFICATION OF THE 21ST C VAUXHALL

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V FIGHTING GENTRIFICATION OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY VAUXHALL

After surviving homophobia, AIDS, and Thatcher, the queer community in Vauxhall seemed to have settled for good. Tyers Terrace, named after the Gardens’ most successful proprietor, was locally known to be ‘gay’; all but one house belonged to LGBTQ+ couples57. It felt like nothing could eradicate queer spaces in Vauxhall. However, queer venues in the area have started to disappear.

From 2006 to 2017, the number of LGBTQ+ venues in London dropped from 121 to 51; the borough of Lambeth lost 10 of its 19 queer venues in the past 14 years58.

People often name the online platforms and social media apps like Grindr and Gaydar that connect people without needing a physical scape as a key culprit. On the other hand, some argue that the new tech and the physical queer spaces are interconnected and provide a variety of possible connections59. Everyone uses technology differently, and the older generation still mainly prefer to connect in the physical space. However, Dr Ben Campkin, a professor of Urbanism and Urban History at the Bartlett School of Architecture and the co-author of the research LGBTQI Nightlife in London from 1986 to the present, stated that such a rapid decline is closely related to the city’s unstoppable economic growth. Since the 2000’s London has adopted market-driven urbanism60. In the 2010’s the plan for the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea ‘opportunity area’ started to be drawn up in City Hall. The land became very lucrative for investment and redevelopment.

The relics of the industrial period started to be demolished to pave the way for 57 Clare Truscott, Interview by author, Tape recording, London, Nov 29, 2021.

58 David Shariatmadari, “Queer today, gone tomorrow: the fight to save LGBT nightlife”, The Guardian, Apr 3, 2019, accessed Jan 3, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/apr/03/ queer-spaces-london-lost-gay-clubs-lgbt-nightlife-gentrification.

59 David Shariatmadari, “Queer today, gone tomorrow: the fight to save LGBT nightlife”.

60 Ben Campkin.

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Fig. 32 Vauxhall Today, by the author

FIGHTING GENTRIFICATION OF THE 21ST C VAUXHALL

49

new shiny tall residential towers. The community started to get priced out of the neighbourhood. A new property was more affordable to foreign investors than working-class Vauxhall natives. When the Damac Tower flats first hit the market in 2015, the price per square foot was over £200061. The average one-bedroom flat in the Nine Elms development today is £787,22362. The number of affordable flats is minimal. There are drastic differences in the available amenities and overall design finishes between two types of flats63. Each new high-rise creates a sensitised, overly controlled image of Vauxhall, the area formerly famous for its grittiness and dirt. Many middle-class straight families are moving in with no awareness of the area’s past.

“I have got three different friends who have moved to Vauxhall and the Nine Elms development, all with young children, married, all straight relationships.

But they’d never really been there before. They had never been to a nightclub.

They thought, ‘Oh, this is a really nice area to live.’ They have moved there because of the redevelopment.64” “Queer space is renovated space65”, but, as the case of Vauxhall showed, it struggles to be a ‘regenerated’ space. Once the disused architecture is gone, the queer community has fewer structures to reclaim and take place. The creativity of resilience is disappearing. A subtle element of queer space is its engagement with the past; if the past disappears, the present has no visual or symbolic anchor.

Through gentrification and urban renewals, layers of memory are erased66. Queer venues in Vauxhall avoided class separation; a lawyer, a teacher, a banker, and a lorry driver could always come in and enjoy the drag show together. It was always an inter-generational and inter-sectional space. However, exclusion was designed into the new development, buildings, streets, and public spaces. The ‘divide and conquer’ policy has taken control over Vauxhall and does not allow queering of the space.

With the demolition of the brutalist high-rise, the Market Tavern was replaced by the recently finished Northern line extension. A lot of smaller venues disappeared, leaving the RVT to fend for itself. After an international real-estate company Immovate attempted to clear the RVT plot for a potential regeneration, the community united to start the RVT Future campaign to get a listed status 61 Oliver Wainwright, “Penthouses and poor doors: how Europe’s ‘biggest regeneration project’ fell flat”, The Guardian, Feb 2, 2021, accessed Jan 3, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/feb/02/penthouses-poor-doors-nine-elms-battersea-london-luxury-housing-development.

62 “Nine Elms House Prices”, Foxtons, accessed Jan 3, 2022, https://www.foxtons.co.uk/living-in/nine-elms/house-prices/ 63 Oliver Wainwright, “Penthouses and poor doors: how Europe’s ‘biggest regeneration project’ fell flat”.

64 Jack Hoe, Interview by author, Tape recording, London, Dec 3, 2021.

65 Reed, “Imminent Domain: Queer Space in the Built Environment,” 67.

66 Arup, University of Westminster, Queering Public Space, 5.

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Fig. 33 The Reprise of “Queer Fun” performance at Queer Spaces: London, 1980s - Today exhibition, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2019

FIGHTING GENTRIFICATION OF THE 21ST C VAUXHALL

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from Historic England. After two tough years and the involvement of highprofile figures like Sir Ian McKellen, the pub received its grade II listed status for “historic and cultural significance as one of the best known and longstanding LGB&T venues in the capital, a role it has played particularly in the second half of the C20.67” As the first building in the UK to be preserved as an essential anchor of the queer community, the RVT created a ripple effect. It set a precedent of passionate campaigning to preserve the queer heritage and queer spaces. It created a new community, uniting different generation of LGBTQ+ people who enjoyed a night-out in the RVT. After much public pressure, the Tower Hamlets council ordered the developers to create an LGBTQ+ pub on site of the recently demolished Joiners Arms with the same opening hours68. Queer people started to be heard when protesting against destroying their landmarks. On June 10th, 2017, an unusual drag show took place as part of the “Queer Fun” event organised

by Duckie and the Queen Mary University at the modern-day Vauxhall Gardens.

The drag artists were wearing architectural models on their heads. Instead of lip-syncing, they read out snippets of planning and licensing documents. The models, bearing no significant distinctions for an average person, were too familiar to the audience members. The Black Cap, the Joiners Arms, the Glass Bar, the Lesbian and Gay Centre - these were London’s queer spaces, past and present69. A riff on the famous 1931 Beaux Arts Ball in New York, where guests dressed as the Chrysler Building and the Waldorf Astoria hotel, was organised by the architecture academics Ben Campkin and Lo Marshall. The performance’s aim for to bring attention to the changing urban fabric of London. Drag became the tool of architectural protest.

Despite a potentially glooming future, where all that is left in Vauxhall is overpriced high-rise buildings, the LGBTQ+ community fights back by carving new types of queer spaces for themselves. Tonic Housing, the UK’s first provider of LGBTQ+ affirmative housing, managed to create the first queer retirement community in the Corniche residential development by Fosters and Partners on Albert Embankment. Tonic@Bankhouse consists of 84 affordable apartments over 14 floors, secured with the financial help of a £5.7 million loan from the Greater London Authority’s Community Housing Fund70. Tonic owns 19 of those flats. This kind of support would not have happened before the 2000s; it is a marker for how far London has come in its LGBTQ+ acceptance. From the Building Safe Choices 2020 research commissioned by Tonic Housing, only 1% of respondents said they want to live in a general retirement community71.

67 Historic England, “Royal Vauxhall Tavern.”

68 David Shariatmadari, “Queer today, gone tomorrow: the fight to save LGBT nightlife.”

69 Ibid.

70 “Tonic@Bankhouse”, Tonic Housing, accessed Nov 23, 2021, https://www.tonichousing.org. uk/tonicatbankhouse.

71 Tonic, Stonewall Housing and Opening Doors London, Building Safe Choices 2020 (London: Tonic, 2020), 6, accessed Nov 25, 2021, https://www.tonichousing.org.uk/bsc-2020-report.

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There are safety concerns regarding LBGTQ+ people in the general retirement homes; often, other residents and members of staff could be homophobic and unwelcoming. Many older people had to go ‘back in the closet’ to get support from their families. While looking for a potential location, the Tonic team settled on Vauxhall because of its relative safety for the queer community.

“I think of all of the places to be queer or to be LGBT in London, we are never going to be completely safe, but of all of the boroughs to be in, this is probably the safest one, and it has got such strong links with LGBT people that we thought, ‘Where the hell else do you put this?’72” The retirement community is not exclusively for queer people; a person who do not identify as LGBTQ+ are welcomed as long as they respect the queer community. Tonic@Bankhouse describes itself as LGBT+ affirming, meaning that their approach to services and support is not just “LGBT+ friendly” but genuinely affirming the lives, histories, needs and desires of LGBTQ+ people73. Once all new residents move in, there will be a variety of communal events and activities attempting to cater for the everyone’s needs. With a broader acknowledgement of the need for queer spaces within the urban fabric, queer space can continue to exist and thrive. LGBTQ+ people managed to take back gentrified space in Vauxhall and make it their own. Tonic@Bankhouse helped reclaim the underused residential building, continuing the tradition of taking place.

“I mean, we have a long history of occupation, don’t we?74” Tonic would try to prioritise people living in London, especially if they had a personal connection to Vauxhall. Maybe their great-great-great-greatgrandparents met at the Vauxhall Gardens. Or maybe some might have spent their youth parting at The Crash, The Hoist or watching Duckie’s performance at the RVT. For them, it means coming back home and claiming the space.

72 Daniel Hibbs-Woodings, Interview by author, Tape recording, London, Nov 24, 2021.

73 “Tonic@Bankhouse”, Tonic Housing.

74 Daniel Hibbs-Woodings, 2021.

FIGHTING GENTRIFICATION OF THE 21ST C VAUXHALL Fig. 34 The Corniche, by the author

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VI CONCLUSION

The principal role of this text was to depict the evolution of Vauxhall as a queer space throughout the turbulent history of queer liberation. By analysing how queer spaces in Vauxhall changed from being a cruising site at the Pleasure Gardens to an established gay neighbourhood in the heart of London, it is fair to say that the queer community has strong ties to the area and will try their hardest and ‘campiest’ to stand their ground. The giant leap forward in the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in the UK has helped to map and document the intangible heritage of the queer community. However, a lot more research is needed to uncover forgotten stories of the LGBTQ+ communities in London and all over the country. There is potential to carry out a more extensive investigation into the queer history of Vauxhall, tracing both private and communal queer spaces.

This further research could result in a publication of a guide for architects on how to design a queer space.

Adaptivity and resilience should be learnt from queer history. Queer spaces are evolving right now. In December 2021, a new pop-up LGBTQ+ community centre was opened in the borough of Southwark near the Blackfriars Bridge. The intentionally temporary space responds to a two-year isolation period among the community due to the COVID-19 pandemic and proof of concept for a future permanent space. The community centre is a sober, inter-generational, and intersectional space run by the community for the community. The ‘sober’ initiative is at the core of the project. Over the years, the first entry point into queer social settings was through nightlife, always associated with more individual sensory gratification, pleasure, and artifice. Although those spaces are still valid and vital

CONCLUSION

55

The principal role of this text was to depict the evolution of Vauxhall as a queer space throughout the turbulent history of queer liberation. By analysing how queer spaces in Vauxhall changed from being a cruising site at the Pleasure Gardens to an established gay neighbourhood in the heart of London, it is fair to say that the queer community has strong ties to the area and will try their hardest and ‘campiest’ to stand their ground. The giant leap forward in the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in the UK has helped to map and document the intangible heritage of the queer community. However, a lot more research is needed to uncover forgotten stories of the LGBTQ+ communities in London and all over the country. There is potential to carry out a more extensive investigation into the queer history of Vauxhall, tracing both private and communal queer spaces.

This further research could result in a publication of a guide for architects on how to design a queer space.

Adaptivity and resilience should be learnt from queer history. Queer spaces are evolving right now. In December 2021, a new pop-up LGBTQ+ community centre was opened in the borough of Southwark near the Blackfriars Bridge. The intentionally temporary space responds to a two-year isolation period among the community due to the COVID-19 pandemic and proof of concept for a future permanent space. The community centre is a sober, inter-generational, and intersectional space run by the community for the community. The ‘sober’ initiative is at the core of the project. Over the years, the first entry point into queer social settings was through nightlife, always associated with more individual sensory gratification, pleasure, and artifice. Although those spaces are still valid and vital to the community, the new centre would be a space where people “create sort of meaningful connections that they can remember the next day.75” Queer space has developed in different ways since Betsky describes it as “a space of pure artifice.76” The LGBTQ+ centre team collaborated with queer architect Martha Summers on the design of the space. The centre was intentionally sparse later to be filled with donations from the community. Leaving blanks for users to fill in themselves is an essential element of queer space design.

Architects could learn a lot about adaptive reuse and creative renovation from queer place-making. The built environment contributes around 40% of the UK’s total carbon footprint77. In the time of the Climate Emergency, the building industry might need to rethink the need for the new-built projects and perhaps focus on 75 Suzanna Chen, “I sat down with London LGBTQ+ Community Centre’s organisers before their launch”, The UCL Tab, Dec 5, 2021, accessed Dec 7, 2021, https://thetab.com/uk/ london/2021/12/05/i-sat-down-with-london-lgbtq-community-centres-organisers-before-theirlaunch-43617.

76 Betsky, Queer Space, 3.

77 UKGBC, “Climate Change: UKGBC’s vision for a sustainable built environment is one that mitigates and adapts to climate change”, accessed Dec 7, 2022, https://www.ukgbc.org/climate-change-2/.

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Fig. 35, 36 LGBTQ+ Community Centre, Martha Summers, 2021

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reusing existing structures. UK’s largest cities such as London, Manchester and Liverpool are being rapidly redeveloped, demolishing the under-used structures.

The queer ‘renovation’ sensibility can change how we build within the urban environment. It could protect vulnerable communities who cannot afford to live in the regenerated areas and protect the local history. The requirements for the listed status in Britain are somewhat limiting and requires much evidence to prove its architectural or historical interest; the significance of queer space cannot often be proven to the wider public as much of the information is lost or unrecorded. The RVT case set an important precedent, but not everyone agreed with the decision. KMHeritage, a consultancy for the historic built environment, submitted a listing report arguing the insignificance of the RVT as a historic landmark.

“It is clear that the Royal Vauxhall Tavern was not unique or alone in providing a place for the LGBTQ community in London over a long period - it is not the only gay pub in London, nor the only gay pub to have hosted notable performance acts, nor the only gay pub where people may have met and discussed issues important to the gay community.78” The lack of understanding of the community’s hardships throughout the history is dangerous for queer space. There is a need to update the planning and listing policies to reflect the importance of the LGBTQ+ space. Queer heritage needs to be studied more widely by both members and non-members of the LGBTQ+ community to appreciate the vital role of historical queer spaces and their influence on mainstream culture. Queer people have given a vast contribution to mainstream music, art, dance, literature and architecture.

The examples provided in this dissertation mainly focused on spaces that the queer community took over and reclaimed. Although, as mentioned before, being ‘renovated’ is the most common trait among queer spaces around London and beyond, there are examples of purpose-built queer spaces. UK’s only purposebuilt LGBTQ+ community centre in Manchester was built in 1988, with the grant coming from the city council just before Section 28 came into force. The one and a half storey yellow brick building with high, above-head windows to keep the outside out was built with a basic foundation and cheap material79. The Proud Trust, which occupies the building, felt like it outlived its time and needed to be re-built to suit the current needs. With the funding collected with the help of the local council and charities, the building work started in summer 2020. During an extensive, inclusive design process organised by the architecture firm URBED 78 KMHeritage, A Representation Regarding a Proposal to Add the Building to the Statutory List, May 2015, provided by Ben Walters on March 11, 2021.

79 “Researcher unearths the proud history of Manchester’s LGBT+ Centre”, Manchester Metropolitan University, Feb 3, 2020, accessed Jan 2, 2022, https://www.mmu.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/ story/11761/.

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Fig. 37 Manchester Purpose-built LGBTQ+ Community Centre, URBED, 2018

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the key concern was about the refurbishment and extension opportunities of the new building in the future80. Giving future users control over the physical space is vital for designing a queer project. When the LGBTQ+ community in Manchester were asked about the façade of the new building, many voiced their preferences in using colours, not in a ‘garish’ way, and adding shutters to the windows to allow for some privacy81. The proposed design of a new three-storey centre incorporates the yellow brick wall on the ground floor as a visual link to the past centre. The upper levels are cladded in gold-copper alloy cladding. The building makes a bold statement, and the queer community no longer wants to hide behind the plain façade. This case study sets a great ex-ample of how architects could carefully incorporate the needs and preferences of the LGBTQ+ community when designing queer spaces.

In the last five years, the interest in queer spaces and architecture has grown. Dr Ben Campkin’s efforts in investigating queer venues helped record the history of the London nightlife, charting LGBTQ+ venues from the 1980s to the present.

The case studies from research led by Professor Campkin and UCL Urban Laboratory, with research assistance from Lo Marshall and Christopher Storey, were presented as archive sections at “Queer Spaces: London, 1980s – Today” exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2019. The exhibition cast a celebratory and defiant eye over the history of London’s queer spaces, displaying rarely seen archival material with original work by artists concerned with the vibrancy and importance of LGBTQ+ cultural life82. In May 2021, the University of Westminster and the global engineering and design firm Arup published a “Queering Public Space” report, exploring the relationship between queer communities and public space. The extensive research helped analyse the positive and negative aspects of public spaces and how they could be improved to become safer and accommodating not just for the LGBTQ+ members, but for everyone.

Key findings suggest that planners should think beyond gay neighbourhoods and strive towards inclusive practice beyond preserving queer spaces. The planning policies should reflect the diversity of the population and the urban fabric. Architecture and design should no longer be viewed as neutral to create a genuinely inclusive urban environment. “Much public space in the UK was designed and built in the nineteenth century and reflects the increasingly rigid sexual mores and binary gender assumptions of that era.83” Architects and designers need to learn more about the diverse urban environment, including people of different genders, sexualities, religions, and ethnicities. The world has 80 URBED, The LGBT+ Centre Design and Access Statement (Manchester: URBED, 2018), 12, accessed Jan 2, 2022, http://urbed.coop/projects/lgbt-centre.

81 URBED, The LGBT+ Centre Design and Access Statement, 14.

82 Press Release, “Queer Spaces: London, 1980s – Today,” Whitechapel Gallery, Feb 5, 2019, accessed Jan 3, 2022, https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/about/press/celebratory-defiant-take-history-londons-queer-spaces/.

83 Arup, University of Westminster, Queering Public Space, 14.

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started to question its unconscious biases, and architecture can reflect that. We need to move towards more informed and inter-sectional architecture. We need to hear all the different voices expressing their concerns to do it right.

“Queering public space, to me, means an ongoing commitment to challenging the norms, especially heteropatriarchy, which govern our everyday lives.

This is also embodied by architecture and public artwork, where the majority of sculptures that can be found in public space represent a white heteronormativity. Monuments, in particular, are a testimony to the powers that control public spaces. That said, a permanent queer monument could remind generations of people of those who have been underrepresented, persecuted, marginalised, and oppressed throughout history.84” Dr Martin Zebracki The dissertation findings also emphasise architecture ‘coming out of the closet’.

It sparks the debate on whether or not it is now safe for queer spaces to become more visible to the broader public. During more turbulent times of the past, the façades would always be plain to not attract unwanted attention. Now queer façades are becoming bolder. However, hate crimes are still happening in the UK. The entrance to the pop-up LGBTQ+ centre in Southwark was vandalised.

Someone graffitied ‘lame’ on the wall of the centre in January 2022. Queer people are still getting ‘queer bashed’ or killed outside queer venues. If queer spaces become more visible, does it make them more vulnerable to attacks? It may be a more complex issue that transcends the field of architecture. A combination of education and policy change is required to change people’s attitudes and to challenge their prejudices. Nevertheless, people can adapt to diversity; if one is exposed to different cultures, one could learns to accept the differences with time. If public spaces become more queer accepting, they can change the public.

The “Queering Public Spaces” report suggests that making queer history more visible can shape the societies views and understanding. The Rainbow Plaque Projects, which started in Leeds, attempts to temporarily mark buildings with layers of queer historical significance that are entirely invisible outside the LGBTQ+ community. People can add a DIY rainbow sign commemorating an event in queer history. The event could be a personal story such as a first kiss or ‘coming out’ to friends of family. Anyone can take part and temporarily mark a place of queer significance. Similar projects might help visually recover the existing queerness of a space. The previously unknown queer heritage of London could be-come more visible to everyone. The past struggles and victories of the queer spaces should not be forgotten, instead the city should celebrate them.

84

Arup, University of Westminster, Queering Public Space, 10.

APPENDICES

VII APPENDIX A LAGNA clippings, Bishopsgate Institute

Streatham News 15/6/1979

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South London Press 10/12/1982

Lambethan Aug/ Sept 1984

APPENDICES

Glasgow Herald 11/12/1985

London Standard 10/1/86

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South London Press 10/12/1986

London Evening Standard 26/6/86

APPENDICES

South London Press 4/7/1986

South London News and Mitcham News 26/9/86

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The Sun 6/10/1986

Streatham News 28/11/86

APPENDICES

The Independent 18/12/1986

The Independent 27/1/87

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London Evening Standard 2/2/1987

South London Press 24/2/87

APPENDICES

Spare Rib March 1987

Daily Mirror 2/4/87

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Evening Standard 8/4/1987

The Sun 9/4/87

APPENDICES

LDN 10/4/87

The Times 10/4/87

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Sunday Express 12/4/1987

London Evening Standard 24/4/87

APPENDICES

The Times 4/11/88

Harrow Observer 19/7/90

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Evening Mail 30/8/1991

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VIII BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books Bell, David and Gill Valentine. Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities. London: Routledge, 1995 Betsky, Aaron. Queer Space: Architecture and Same-sex Desire. New York: William Morrow & Co, 1997.

Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Butler, Judith. Gender trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, edited by Sue-Ellen Case, 270-282. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990.

Coke, David and Alan Borg. Vauxhall Gardens: A History. London: Yale University Press, 2012.

Collins, Wilkie. No Name. London: Electric Book Co, 2001.

Colomina, Beatriz. Sexuality and Space. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992.

Conlin, Jonathan. The Pleasure Garden, from Vauxhall to Coney Island. Philadelphia:

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University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

Dickens, Charles. Sketches by Boz. London: Penguin Classics, 1995.

Houlbrook, Matt. Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis 1919-1957.

London: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Kane, Josephine. The Architecture of Pleasure: British Amusement parks 1900-1939.

Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.

McCormick, Ian. Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writing. Hove: Psychology Press, 1997.

Mort, Frank. Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society. London: Yale University Press, 2010.

Pry, Paul. For Your Convenience: A Learned Dialogue, Instructive to all Londoners & London Visitors, Overheard in the Theleme Club and Taken Down Verbatim. London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd, 1937.

Rocos, Cleo. The Power of Positive Drinking. Lonndon: Square Peg, 2013.

Smollett, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. London: W. Johnson & B. Collins, 1771.

Thackeray, William. Vanity Fair. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1848.

Journals Andersson, Johan. “Vauxhall’s Post-industrial Pleasure Gardens: ‘Death Wish’ and Hedonism in 21st-century London.” Urban Studies Vol. 48, No. 1 (2011): 85-100.

Conlin, Jonathan. “Vauxhall Revisited: The Afterlife of a London Pleasure Garden, 1770– 1859.” Journal of British Studies Vol. 45, No. 4 (2006): 718-743.

Garrity, Jane. “Mapping Queer Space.” English Language Notes 45.2, Fall/Winter (2007): 1-5.

Gorny, Robert Alexander and Dirk van den Heuvel. “Introduction. New Figurations in Architecture Theory: From Queer Performance to Becoming Trans.” Footprint 21, (2017): 1–10.

Reed, Christopher. “Imminent Domain: Queer Space in the Built Environment.” Art Journal Vol. 55, No. 4 (1996): 64-70.

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Articles Cook, Peter. “AR120: Peter Cook on Pleasure.” The Architectural Review. Jan 26, 2017.

Accessed April 15, 2021. https://www.architectural-review.com/archive/ar-120/ar-120peter-cook-on-pleasure.

Lemmey, Huw. “Out of Space: Changing Homosexual Geographies.” The Architectural Review. March 28, 2019. Accessed March 11, 2021. https://www.architectural-review.com/ essays/out-of-space-changing-homosexual-geographies.

Pilcher, Donald. “Leisure as an Architecture Problem.” The Architectural Review. Dec 1938. Accessed April 15, 2021. https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/leisure-as-anarchitectural-problem.

Slessor, Catherine. “Pleasure principles: on the homogenisation of the modern city.” The Architectural Review. April 27, 2018. Accessed April 13, 2021. https://www.architecturalreview.com/essays/pleasure-principles-on-the-homogenisation-of-the-modern-city.

Films Goodbye Gemini. Directed by Alan Gibson. Joseph Shaftel Productions, 1970.

Pretend It’s a City. “Cultural Affairs.” Netflix video, 6:36 Directed by Martin Scorsese. Jan 8, 2021. https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81078137.

Pride. Directed by Matthew Warchus. Pathe UK, Pathé, CBS Films, BBC Films, Proud Films, BFI, 2014.

Rebel Dykes. Directed by Harri Shanahan and Siân A. Williams. Riot Production, 2021.

What’s a Girl Like You… Directed by Charlie Squires. London Weekend Television, 1969.

Reports Arup, University of Westminster. Queering Public Space. London: Arup, 2021.Accessed Oct 24, 2021, https://www.arup.com/perspectives/publications/research/section/ queering-public-space.

Campkin, Ben and Laura Marshall. LGBTQ+ Cultural Infrastructure in London: Night Venues, 2006–present. London: UCL Urban Laboratory, 2017. Accessed on Dec 29, 2021. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/urban-lab/research/research-projects/lgbtq-nightlife-spaceslondon.

Campkin, Ben and Laura Marshall. LGBTQ+ Nightlife in London from 1986 to the present.

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London: UCL Urban Laboratory, 2020. Accessed on Dec 29, 2021. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ urban-lab/sites/urban-lab/files/lgbtq_spaces_in_camden_1986-present_ucl_urban_ laboratory.pdf.

Campkin, Ben and Laura Marshall. LGBTQI Nightlife in London from 1986 to the present.

Interim Findings. London: UCL Urban Laboratory, 2016. Accessed on Dec 29, 2021. https:// www.ucl.ac.uk/urban-lab/research/research-projects/lgbtq-nightlife-spaces-london.

KM Heritage. A Representation Regarding a Proposal to Add the Building to the Statutory List. London: KM Heritage, 2015.

Stop Hate UK. Annual Statistical Report 2018/2019. Accessed on Oct 15, 2021. https:// www.stophateuk.org/2019/04/15/stop-hate-uk-annual-statistical-report-2018-2019/.

Tonic, Stonewall Housing and Opening Doors London. Building Safe Choices 2020.

London: Tonic, 2020. Accessed Nov 25, 2021. https://www.tonichousing.org.uk/bsc-2020report.

URBED. The LGBT+ Centre Design and Access Statement. Manchester: URBED, 2018.

Accessed Jan 2, 2022. http://urbed.coop/projects/lgbt-centre.

Walters, Ben. Supplementary RVT Listing Submission. London: RVT Future, 2015.

Accessed Oct 24, 2021. http://www.rvt.community/read-our-application-to-make-thetavern-a-listed-building/ Walters, Ben. Supplementary RVT listing submission after interim report June 2015.

London: RVT Future, 2015. Accessed Oct 24, 2021. http://www.rvt.community/wpcontent/uploads/2015/09/Supplementary-RVT-listing-submission-after-interim-reportJune-2015.pdf.

Interviews Ashurst, Paul. “Paul Ashurst on London Gay Pubs That Have Disappeared.” YouTube video. Posted by “Re-Dock.” June 2, 2014. Accessed March 17, 2021. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=0IMgMamH0j0&ab_channel=Re-Dock.

Bourne, Bette. “Bette Bourne on older queens in the 1950’s.” YouTube video. Posted by “ReDock.” June 26, 2014. Accessed March 17, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flB4Kdz39U&ab_channel=Re-Dock.

Campbell, John. “John ‘Ebon-Knee’ Campbell - Tour of the RVT.” YouTube video.

Posted by “Re-Dock.” June 10, 2014. Accessed March 17, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=UMAB42rsygo&ab_channel=Re-Dock.

Casson, Simon. “Simon Casson - When the RVT Was Threatened with Demolition.”

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YouTube video. Posted by “Re-Dock.” May 12, 2014. Accessed March 17, 2021. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=d1vL3Yzdnz0&ab_channel=Re-Dock.

Feather, Stuart. “Stuart Feather Describes the RVT in the 1960’s.” YouTube video.

Posted by “Re-Dock.” May 6, 2014. Accessed Dec 28, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wnwKSemQBjM&ab_channel=UCLMindsLunchHourLectures.

Feather, Stuart. “Stuart Feather on the Politics of Drag.” YouTube video. Posted by “Re-Dock.” June 18, 2014. Accessed Dec 28, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wnwKSemQBjM&ab_channel=UCLMindsLunchHourLectures.

O’Grady, Paul. “Paul O’Grady remembers the Royal Vauxhall Tavern,” YouTube video.

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O’Grady, Paul. “Paul O’Grady Remembers the RVT Police Raids,” YouTube video.

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Pryor, Andrew. “Andrew Pryor - Drag acts performing on the bar in the 1970’s.” YouTube video. Posted by “Re-Dock.” July 1, 2014. Accessed March 17, 2021. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=7i-P1USWB1g&ab_channel=Re-Dock.

Pryor, Andrew. “Andrew Pryor - First Time at the Vauxhall.” YouTube video. Posted by “Re-Dock.” June 27, 2014. Accessed March 17, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DzpD167_wzU&ab_channel=Re-Dock.

Smith, Rupert. “Rupert Smith - The Vauxhall at the Early Time of the AIDS Crisis.”

YouTube video. Posted by “Re-Dock.” July 5, 2014. Accessed Dec 28, 2021. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=mpHf_UOKX_4&ab_channel=Re-Dock.

Wright, Ronald. “Ronald Wright on Treatment by the Police in the 1960’s.” YouTube video.

Posted by “Re-Dock.” June 28, 2014. Accessed Dec 28, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=B_8ByOFZZPw&ab_channel=Re-Dock.

Interviews by the Author Catterall, Pippa. Interview by author. Asked not to be recorded. London. Oct 22, 2021.

Hibbs-Woodings, Daniel. Interview by author. Tape recording. London. Nov 24, 2021.

Hoe, Jack. Interview by author. Tape recording. London. Dec 3, 2021.

Truscott, Clare. Interview by author. Tape recording. London. Nov 29, 2021.

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Williams, Jullian. Interview by author. Tape recording. London. Oct 25, 2021.

Online Braidwood, Ella. “‘Gay plague’: The vile, horrific and inhumane way the media reported the AIDS crisis”, Pink News. Nov 30, 2018. Accessed Oct 30, 2021. https://www.pinknews. co.uk/2018/11/30/world-aids-day-1980s-headlines-tabloids/.

Campkin, Ben. “Lunch Hour Lectures: London’s Queer Infrastructure.” YouTube video, 21:35. Posted by “UCL Minds Lunch Hour Lectures.” April 27, 2021.

Accessed Dec 29, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnwKSemQBjM&ab_ channel=UCLMindsLunchHourLectures.

Catterall, Pippa. “Queering Public Space | Report | Arup.” YouTube video, 9:16.

Posted by “Arup.” May 17, 2021. Accessed Oct 24, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=gbRUVSSARO4&ab_channel=Arup.

Chen, Suzanna. “I sat down with London LGBTQ+ Community Centre’s organisers before their launch”, The UCL Tab. Dec 5, 2021. Accessed Dec 7, 2021. https://thetab.com/uk/ london/2021/12/05/i-sat-down-with-london-lgbtq-community-centres-organisers-beforetheir-launch-43617.

Gibson, Gayle. “Same-sex Celts: Saint Brigid & her special friend”, Xtramagazine. Mar 16, 2005. Accessed Oct 25, 2021. https://xtramagazine.com/love-sex/same-sex-celts-2-39898.

“Nine Elms House Prices”, Foxtons. Accessed Jan 3, 2022. https://www.foxtons.co.uk/ living-in/nine-elms/house-prices/.

Oxford University Press. “Queer, n.2”, OED Online. December 2021. Accessed Jan 3, 2022. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/156235?rskey=VXOsMJ&result=1&isAdvanced=false.

Oxford University Press. “Queer, adj.1”, OED Online. December 2021. Accessed Jan 3, 2022. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/156236?rskey=1fiPDo&result=2&isAdvanced=false.

Press Release. “Queer Spaces: London, 1980s – Today,” Whitechapel Gallery. Feb 5, 2019.

Accessed Jan 3, 2022. https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/about/press/celebratorydefiant-take-history-londons-queer-spaces/.

“Researcher unearths the proud history of Manchester’s LGBT+ Centre”, Manchester Metropolitan University. Feb 3, 2020. Accessed Jan 2, 2022. https://www.mmu.ac.uk/newsand-events/news/story/11761/.

“Royal Vauxhall Tavern”, Historic England. Sep 8, 2015. Accessed Oct 24, 2021. https:// historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1426984?section=official-listing.

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Shariatmadari, David. “Queer today, gone tomorrow: the fight to save LGBT nightlife”, The Guardian. Apr 3, 2019. Accessed Jan 3, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2019/apr/03/queer-spaces-london-lost-gay-clubs-lgbt-nightlifegentrification.

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Thatcher, Margaret. “Speech to Conservative Party Conference”, Margaret Thatcher Foundation. Oct 9, 1987. Accessed Dec 10, 2021. https://www.margaretthatcher.org/ document/106941.

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UKGBC. “Climate Change: UKGBC’s vision for a sustainable built environment is one that mitigates and adapts to climate change.” Accessed Dec 7, 2022. https://www.ukgbc. org/climate-change-2/.

Wainwright, Oliver. “Penthouses and poor doors: how Europe’s ‘biggest regeneration project’ fell flat”, The Guardian. Feb 2, 2021. Accessed Jan 3, 2022. https://www.theguardian. com/artanddesign/2021/feb/02/penthouses-poor-doors-nine-elms-battersea-londonluxury-housing-development.

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IX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 1 Illustrations of the blue plaques commemorating Oscar Wilde and Virginia Wolf.

By the author.

Fig. 2 Vauxhall Garden by Thomas Rowlandson, 1809 Thomas Rowlandson, “Vauxhall Garden,” 1809. Available at: https://www.metmuseum. org/art/collection/search/744566. (accessed 10/01/22) Fig. 3 Fragment of John Rocque’s Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1749 John Rocque, “Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster”, 1749. Available at: https:// www.locatinglondon.org/ (accessed 10/01/22) Fig. 4 Entrance to Vauxhall Tea Gardens, c.1780 Unkown, “Entrance to Vauxhall Tea Gardens”, c.1780.

David Coke and Alan Borg. Vauxhall Gardens: A History. London: Yale University Press, 2012.

Fig. 5 A View of the Temple of Domus &c. in Vauxhall Gardens, J. S. Muller, 1751 J. S. Muller after Canaletto, “A View of the Temple of Domus &c. in Vauxhall Gardens,” 1751. David’s Coke Collection.

David Coke and Alan Borg. Vauxhall Gardens: A History. London: Yale University Press, 2012.

Fig. 6 A View of Chinese Pavilions and Boxes in Vaux Hall Gardens, T. Bowles, c.1840 T. Bowles after S. Wale, “A View of Chinese Pavilions and Boxes in Vaux HallGardens,” c.1840. David’s Coke Collection.

David Coke and Alan Borg. Vauxhall Gardens: A History. London: Yale University Press,

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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2012.

Fig. 7 A Map of Vauxhall Gardens, 1841 Warwick Wroth. “A Map of Vauxhall Gardens,” 1841. Available at: https://www. museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/vauxhall-pleasure-gardens (accessed 10/01/22) Fig. 8 The Milkmaid’s Garland, or Humours of May Day by, Francis Hayman, 1741-1742 Francis Hayman, “The Milkmaid’s Garland, or Humours of May Day” 1741-1742. Museum.

Available at: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O17306/the-milkmaids-garland-orhumours-oil-painting-hayman-francis-ra/ (accessed 10/01/22) Fig. 9, 10 Advertisement Posters for the Last Night in Vauxhall Gardens, 1859 Advertisement Posters for the Last Night in Vauxhall Gardens, 1859. Available at: https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/why-did-londons-pleasure-gardensclose(accessed 10/01/22) Fig. 11 The Last Surviving Building from the Gardens’ complex. By the author Fig. 12 The Royal Vauxhall Tavern. By the author Fig. 13 A Cover of “ A Catalogue of Valuable Fixtures, Fittings and Building Materials...”, 1859 A Cover of “ A Catalogue of Valuable Fixtures, Fittings and Building Materials...”, 1859.

Available at: http://www.vauxhallgardens.com/vauxhall_gardens_object_archive_ april2016_page.html (accessed 10/01/22) Fig. 14 For Your Convenience Map, 1930’s Paul Fry, “For Your Convenience”, 1930’s.

Paul Pry. For Your Convenience: A Learned Dialogue, Instructive to all Londoners & London Visitors, Overheard in the Theleme Club and Taken Down Verbatim. London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd, 1937.

Fig. 15 Diagram of the RVT Ground Floor Plan in the 1960’s. By the author Fig. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 Stills from What a Girl Like You… 1969 What’s a Girl Like You… Directed by Charlie Squires. London Weekend Television, 1969.

Fig. 22 The Polka Dots out of Drag. By the author Fig. 23 Stuart Feather. By the author Fig. 24 Diagram of the RVT Ground Floor Plan in the 1980’s. By the author Fig. 25 Princess Diana. By the author Fig. 26, 27 The Newspaper Clipping from the 1980’s

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The Newspaper Clipping from the 1980’s. Available at: https://www.pinknews. co.uk/2018/11/30/world-aids-day-1980s-headlines-tabloids/. (accessed 10/01/22) Fig. 28 Lily Savage in and out of Drag (Paul O’Grady). By the author Fig. 29 Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool. By the author Fig. 30, 31 Fig. 30, 31 Rebel Dykes gatecrashing the BBC, 1988 Rebel Dykes gatecrashing the BBC, 1988. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/ article/cacc0b40-c3a4-473b-86cc-11863c0b3f30. (accessed 10/01/22) Fig. 32 Vauxhall Today. By the author Fig. 33 The Reprise of “Queer Fun” performance at Queer Spaces: London, 1980s - Today exhibition, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2019 Guy Bell, “Queer Spaces: London, 1980s - Today exhibition”, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2019. Available at: https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/ queer-spaces-london-1980s-today-exhibition-whitechapel-gallery-london-uk-02-apr-201910184686e (accessed 10/01/22) Fig. 34 The Corniche. By the author Fig. 35, 36 LGBTQ+ Community Centre, Martha Summers, 2021 Martha Summers, LGBTQ+ Community Centre. Available at: https://londonlgbtqcentre. org/ (accessed 10/01/22) Fig. 37 Manchester Purpose-built LGBTQ+ Community Centre, URBED, 2018 URBED, The LGBT+ Centre, 2018. Available at: http://urbed.coop/projects/lgbt-centre. (accessed 10/01/22)

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