Gateways club

The Gateways club was a noted lesbian nightclub located at 239 King's Road on the corner of Bramerton Street, Chelsea, London, England.

The final non-public night was the following Monday, as the Kenric lesbian group had booked the venue for a social event, and longstanding members removed the nameplate from the front door as a souvenir, amongst other fixtures and fittings.

The club had many gay and lesbian regulars, and was also frequented by black Caribbean people, like Chester Harriott, who played jazz piano there,[2] and by members of other minority groups that were discriminated against elsewhere.

[4] The club was described as having a green door with a steep staircase leading down to a windowless cellar bar that was only 35 ft x 18 ft.[1] The walls had been painted by local artists and there was a constant smoky atmosphere.

Maggi Hambling described the club as being 'All sweat and sway of so many people dancing in a small space, that was part of the excitement'.

The neighbourhood around Chelsea went very upmarket and, in 1985, the club lost its late licence due to complaints of loud music.

[6] The first Kenric group - now a nationwide organisation for lesbian and bisexual women - also used to meet regularly in the Gateways club on Monday nights,[1] when the bar was otherwise closed.

In 1967, when reform of the law on male homosexual acts was about to be passed by Parliament, the BBC aired two programmes called Man Alive: Consenting Adults.

Eighty Gateways members, including Maggi Hambling, Maureen Duffy, Pat Arrowsmith, and some who appeared in the film, including Archie and Susannah York, shared their memories and photos in From the Closet to the Screen: Women at the Gateways Club 1945-85, by Jill Gardiner.

[9] Maureen Chadwick's play The Speed Twins [10] was set in an afterlife version of the Gateways, complete with such features as the juke box, and premiered at Riverside Studios, Hammersmith in 2013.

A version of the Gateways club featured in Call the Midwife Series 5 Episode 7 as a place visited by the character Patsy Mount and her girlfriend Delia Busby, first broadcast on BBC 1 on 28 February 2016.