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For a long time, it was a case of if you know, you know.
A green door on the corner of King's Road and Bramerton Street in Chelsea was — for over half a century — the portal to a world of acceptance and debauchery for London's lesbian community.
The Gateways Club — which has just been awarded an English Heritage Blue Plaque, unveiled by radio presenter and LGBTQ+ events promoter Amy Lamé — started out as a bohemian cellar bar in 1931, and soon became popular among lesbians, including the writer Radclyffe Hall (who lived around the corner, and already has a Blue Plaque).
Post-war the club's reputation among women was cemented — many of London's LGBTQ+ community are said to have had their first introduction to lesbian life in this smoky, windowless room.
The club's repute ballooned after featuring heavily in Maureen Duffy's chapter on 'Lesbian London' in New London Spy, a guide to alternative London, published in 1966. The following year, it introduced a 'women only' policy, at which point the BBC Man Alive documentary presented the Gateways as somewhere women came to "dance, drink, flirt and discuss their problems".
The club also appeared in the controversial 1968 comedy drama The Killing of Sister George, starring Beryl Reid as a TV star who fears the end of her career, as well as her relationship with a younger woman. By this time, the Gateways' reputation had outgrown even Paris' Le Monocle, a lesbian bar which was shut down during the Second World War.
Among the punters in the Gateways' long-lived heyday were the artist Maggi Hambling, singer Dusty Springfield and the presenter Sandi Toksvig.
Says Rebecca Preston, Historian at English Heritage: "The Gateways Club in Chelsea holds a profoundly significant place in British LGBTQ+ history and the site remains an important one in the wider history of the capital. For over five decades, it offered a precious safe space where lesbian women could be themselves, free from judgement, harassment, and the prying eyes of the law.
"This Blue Plaque commemorates a venue of great social significance."
The Gateways closed its green door for the final time in September 1985, by which point homosexuality had been legalised for almost 20 years, and same sex clubs were no longer a secretive taboo. In 2022, the BBC ran another documentary, Gateways Grind: London's Secret Lesbian Club (available at time of writing on BBC's iPlayer) in which Sandi Toksvig delves into the club's rich history.
At the end of the show, she presented the site of the club with a temporary Blue Plaque: "until the permanent one is awarded." Three years later, and here it is.
