NIGHTCLUBS

Annabel's

In 1963 John Aspinall opened The Clermont Club, a casino, in a house on Berkeley Square, Mayfair. He offered the basement to Mark Birley as a space in which to open a nightclub. Mr Birley commissioned Sir Philip Jebb to remodel the space. He chose the architect because the man had never been to a nightclub and therefore had no preconceptions as to what one should be like. The result resembled an Edwardian country house.

Annabel s opened in 1963. At the time, its policy of not requiring men to wear black tie attire was radically different from the prevailing attitude among its peers. Mr Birley named the establishment after his wife Annabel, who left him for Sir James Goldsmith. The original menu was assembled with the help of Elizabeth David.

Aspinall and Birley fell out over the former's wish to use part of the No. 44 basement as a wine cellar for The Clermont. The sole witness to the argument was reputed to have noted that Aspinall had been white with rage and Birley red with anger.

Birley went on to also become the proprietor of Harry's Bar, Mark's Club, and the Bath & Racquets Club. The first two were the architectural work of Jebb.

After a vibrant period that lasted until the end of the 1970s, Annabel's was relatively subdued during the 1980s. During the 1990s the business started to revive.

In November 2001 Annabel's relaxed its admissions policy to admit men without a tie. Mr Birley soon came to the conclusion that British men did not know how to dress unless they were wearing a suit. In April 2002 it was reported that Annabel's was reverting to its policy of requiring men to wear a tie.

In 2003 Birley transferred the management of the business to his children. However, he fell out with them. In 2007 he sold the business to Richard Caring, a clothing industry magnate.

Location: 44 Berkeley Square, W1J 5AR. Beneath The Clermont Club. (purple, blue)

Website: https://annabels.co.uk

Mark's Club

Siegi Sessler (1910-1969) was a Cracow-born Polish Jew who worked as a professional wrestler. During the Second World War he served in the British armed services. Of seven sibs only he and his younger brother Freddie (n Arden) (1923-2000) survived. Following the war he discovered an uncle had opened a restaurant in Swiss Cottage. He and partner established an office above from which they ran The Milroy and Les Ambassadeures nightclubs. His first solo venture was La Rue in Mayfair. He spent time in the United States where he became friendly with a number of film-makers and entertainers who had been adversely affected by the rise of McCarthyism. In 1950 Sessler opened Siegi's Club, a restaurant on Charles Street in Mayfair. This proved to be popular with American movie stars and singers because of the privacy that he provided. Following his death, the business was sold it to Mark Birley, who subsequently renamed it Mark's Club.

Location: Mark s, 46 Charles Street, W1J 5EJ (purple, pink)

Website: www.marksclub.co.uk

Heaven

In the late 1970s Jeremy Norman spent time in New York where he was favourably impressed by the city's gay nightlife culture. He sought to introduce some of it to London when he opened the Embassy Club in Bond Street in 1978. The following year he opened Heaven in a space underneath Charing Cross Railway Station. The club's 2000-person capacity made it far larger than any previous regular gay venue in London. In 1981 Norman sold the club to Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group.

Location: 180-182 Hungerford Lane, WC2N 6NG. In the arches underneath Charing Cross Railway Station. (yellow, brown)

Website: https://heaven-london.co.uk

Stringfellows

Peter Stringfellow (1940-2017) started in the nightclub business with the Black Cat Club in his native Sheffield in 1962. He moved his activities to London in 1980 and opened Stringfellows on Upper St Martin's Lane. It flourished during the Thatcher boom of the 1980s. When appearing on a television panel show, one of his fellow panellists commented that his hairstyle was older than his girlfriends.

Stringfellow bought the Talk of the Town on Leicester Square and reopened it in 1983 as The Hippodrome.

In the United States he witnessed topless-table dancing. In 1996 he relaunched his Covent Garden club as Cabaret of Angels, Britain's first venue for the form.

Location: 16-19 Upper St Martin's Lane, WC2H 9EF (orange, brown)

Website: www.stringfellows.com

Tramp

Tramp is a members-only nightclub that was opened in 1969 by Johnny Gold, a bookmaker, who had opened his first nightclub six years before.

Tramp acquired a reputation for allowing celebrities to let their hair down. Photography within it was banned.

In the late 1990s the club's founders sold it to Caledonian Heritable, a company that was controlled by Kevin Doyle.

Location: 40 Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6DN (blue, red)

David Backhouse 2024