Gargoyle Club

Gargoyle Club, 1940

The Gargoyle was a private members' club (dodging alcohol laws that pubs had to observe)^[1] on the upper floors of 69 Dean Street, Soho, London (at the corner with Meard Street), founded on 16 January 1925^[2] by the aristocratic socialite David Tennant, son of the Scottish 1st Baron Glenconner. David was the brother of Stephen Tennant who was called "the brightest" of the "Bright Young People" and of Edward Wyndham Tennant, the poet who was killed in action in World War I.

Before Tennant

This elegant house, 69 and 70 Dean Street,^[3] a pair of Georgian residences, was built on the Pitt estate^[4] in 1732-1735^[5] by John Meard, the carpenter who helped standardise the Georgian town house.

• Later occupants of No. 70^[4] included :

• Sir William Wolseley, 5th Baronet, 1734–5
• Robert Marsham, second Baron Romney,^[6] 1736–40
• Sir Thomas Wilson, knight and 'agent', 1761–74).

• Later occupants of No. 69^[4] included :

• George Wandesford, 4th Viscount Castlecomer^[7] (1687–1751), in 1750;
• Sir John Wynn, 2nd Baronet, 1755–73
• Baron Grant in 1775;
• Sir Lionel Darell, 1st Baronet,^[8] 1775–95
• (Sir) Thomas Bell, 1796–1824

"In 1834 No. 69 was taken by Vincent Novello, the composer and musical editor, and his son, Joseph Alfred, music seller and publisher, who were perhaps responsible for the erection of the back premises, with the wall still fronting Meard Street. Vincent's daughter, Clara, the singer, was also living here in 1840 and the painter, J. P. Davis, in 1842. In 1847 the firm of Novello became music-printers also. It was probably in 1864–5 that the upper storeys were added to No. 69 to accommodate the printing works. In 1867 the firm removed to Berners Street but in 1871 the printing works returned to No. 69, and No. 70 was bought in 1875 for the storage of plates. Thenceforward the firm occupied both houses until 1898, when it moved to new printing works in Hollen Street."
Survey of London^[4][9][10]

In the 1970s, on the ground floors, at 69 was A. Stewart McCracken Ltd. Auction Rooms^[11] and at 70 was Hostaria Romana restaurant^[12][13] and just before the Dean Street Townhouse opened, 69-70 Dean Street was a bar from The Pitcher and Piano chain.^[14][15][16]

David Tennant

David Tennant took a 50-year lease on the upper three floors, while an existing printing works^[17][18][19] established by the Novello music publishing family remained housed beneath.^[20] Here he created a private apartment, very large ballroom, a Tudor Room, coffee room, drawing room and a 350-sq yds flat roof with a garden for dining and dancing, around which neighbouring chimneys were painted brilliant red. All who visited the club shared its intimately democratic, and rickety external lift, four-person maximum, enclosed in shining metal like an art-nouveau cabin trunk.^[21]

The charismatic Tennant was the self-appointed ringmaster to an arena where Bohemians could mingle comfortably with the upper crust, according to writer Michael Luke.^[22][23] Tennant announced: "It will be a chic nightclub for dancing but also an avant-garde place where people can express themselves freely in whatever manner they please." And so it became an epitome of its era. By day the Gargoyle was a lunch club for politicos, literati and nobility. By night it became a cosmopolitan theatre for social, sexual and intellectual challenge.

Of the club's opening night The Daily Telegraph observed that its 300-strong list of members "probably contains more famous names in society and the arts than any other purely social club". These included Somerset Maugham, Noël Coward, Gladys Cooper, Leon Goossens, Gordon Craig, George Grossmith, Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, Nancy Cunard, Adèle Astaire, Edwina Mountbatten, an obligatory Guinness, Rothschild and Sitwell, MPs and peers of the realm.^[24]

Decor

L'Atelier Rouge, Henri Matisse, 1911, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm., (64 in × 51 in), The Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest^[25][26]

Studio, Quai Saint-Michel, Henri Matisse, 1916, oil on canvas, 147.9 x 116.8 cm., (? in × ? in), The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. ^[27]

Designed by Henri Matisse, Edwin Lutyens, and Augustus John,^[28] the interior decor was theatrical – a fountain on the dance floor,^[29][30] log fires in the dining room, wooden gargoyles suspended as lanterns – with a strong Moorish flavour. Henri Matisse was made an honorary member after advising on decor.^[31] To complement the main club-room's elaborate coffered ceiling painted with gold leaf, like the Alhambra, he suggested covering the walls entirely with a mosaic of imperfectly cut glass tiles from an 18th-century chateau.^[32] Matisse himself designed a stunning entrance staircase to this room in glittering steel and brass, which remained in use until the club's conversion into a studio complex in the mid-1980s. The young Tennant bought two of Matisse's paintings in Paris for £600 and in the opinion of Anthony Powell they "lent an air of go-ahead culture to the club". These were the painter's daring and inventive The Red Studio from 1911 which was displayed in the bar^[33] at the Gargoyle until 1941, offered to the Tate Gallery for £400 and declined, then in 1949 joined the MoMA permanent collection in New York where it still hangs.^[34] The other Matisse, The Studio, Quai St Michel (1916), features his favourite model the voluptuous Lorette, naked on a couch, on the club’s stairs.^[33] Today she resides in The Phillips Collection in Washington.^[35]

"The decor is bright but tasteful and Matisse gave his expert advice. Several of his drawings of ballet girls grace the upstairs bar which is a cheerful spot always crowded with people discussing art, politics or women in the liveliest way. ‘My unpaid cabaret,’ David Tennant calls them… The restaurant downstairs seats 140 and its ceiling and general design have been modelled on the Alhambra at Granada. The mirrors are particularly attractive, unless you have drunk too much gin!..The four-piece band led by Alec Alexander, suits the style of the club. It delivers lively, cheerful music that you can dance to without having your nerves torn to shreds. Alec knows all the members and seems to enjoy playing requests."
Stanley Jackson. An Indiscreet Guide to Soho (1942)^[36]

After Tennant

In 1952 David Tennant sold the Gargoyle as a declining^[37] concern^[38][39] for £5,000 to caterer John Negus^[40] and it remained popular among the generation of Francis Bacon, Antonia Fraser and Daniel Farson who would often go on from the Colony Room which was founded in 1948 by Muriel Belcher across at 41 Dean Street. For years the Gargoyle was one of the few places in London serving drinks at affordable prices after midnight. In 1955 the club was sold on to Michael Klinger^[41] and Jimmy Jacobs^[42] who relaunched it as a strip club^[43][44] called the Nell Gwynne (variously advertised as a : Theatre, Club, or Revue).^{[45][46][47][48][49][50][51]} A 1960s ad shows the club as the Nell Gwynne by day and the Gargoyle Club at night.^[52][53]

On 19 May 1979 in the Gargoyle's rooftop club space Hammersmith-born insurance salesman Peter Rosengard^[54] started a weekly club-night on Saturdays called the Comedy Store, in partnership with comedian Don Ward. It was modelled on the original in Los Angeles, and invited audiences to show approval or disapproval of the unknown acts performing by "gonging" them off.^[55] The London Comedy Store made the reputations of many of the UK's upcoming "alternative comedians". Among the original lineup here were Alexei Sayle, Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, French & Saunders, Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson who in 1980 led these pioneers to establish the breakaway Comic Strip team elsewhere in Soho.^[56] All were to prove influential in reshaping British television comedy throughout the 1980s as stars of The Comic Strip Presents.^[57] In 1982 when the upper floors were sold off the Comedy Store moved to a series of other venues and became a template for the new style of stand-up comedy clubs that opened around the land. Ward remained CEO of Comedy Store interests. In 1984 Rosengard went on to manage the band Curiosity Killed the Cat.

In the 1950s, another private club, the Mandrake, opened in the basement, its address was 4 Meard Street,^[58] but due to various linked basements, it shared the same building. Mandrake proprietor, Boris Watson, acquired the leases of adjoining basements and knocked through walls to make a cellar music room, that, during the 1970s, would be known as Billy's and run by Soho's only Jamaican club owner, Vince Howard.^[59]

"a rather seedy gay club frequented by rough lesbians and even rougher trannies...It was owned by a 300-pound six-foot-four black convicted pimp named Vince who sported a huge black fedora, a long leather coat, and fingers the size of sausages with enough diamond rings to give Imelda Marcos cause for concern. And lest we forget, in those days Soho was not full of posh restaurants and membership clubs; it was a vice-infested square mile that housed a red light above every door and on every floor."
^[60][61]

Billy's changed its name to Gossip's^[62] and became part of London's clubbing heritage by spawning scores of weekly club-nights that transformed London's music and fashion scene during the 1980s, crucially a Bowie night run by Steve Strange and Rusty Egan who teamed up at Billy's in 1978 and went on to open the influential Blitz Club,^[63] was directly underneath where the restaurant now is.

In July 1982, the first incarnation, at The Gargoyle Club (roof,) of the Batcave^[64] was opened by Ollie Wisdom, lead singer in the house band, Specimen, and Jon Klein as Art Director, visitors included : Robert Smith, Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Severin, Foetus, Marc Almond and Nick Cave.

Together with 70 Dean Street, number 69 was completely rebuilt^[65] by Soho House to create the Dean Street Townhouse hotel and restaurant, in 2008.^[66][67]

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's first date took place at the Dean Street Dining Room^[68] in the Dean Street Townhouse in 2016.^[69]

Notable members

References

Coordinates: 51°30′48″N 0°07′57″W / 51.513338°N 0.132554°W / 51.513338; -0.132554