Too often, gay bars don’t survive the threats of gentrification and criminalisation. Yet some last long enough to become important institutions in their own right.
This is true of the Nightingale, one of many queer landmarks in Birmingham.
In 1967, 2 men named Laurie Williams and Derek Pemberton paid £600 for ownership of the Nightingale, a rundown Indian restaurant on Birmingham’s Camp Hill.
It was a landmark year for British gay history, thanks to the passage of a bill decriminalising homosexuality in private. It was also a bittersweet victory, one which came with a higher age of consent for gay men, limited jurisdiction (the bill applied only in England and Wales) and harsher punishments for gay people caught on the streets.
At the time, there were very few places for LGBTQ+ communities to express or explore their sexuality in public safely. Same-sex affection shown in straight pubs often led to violence and harassment.
There were a handful of gay club nights, but they came with the risk of being raided by police or exploited and overcharged by landlords.
Williams and Pemberton set out on a mission to build a viable alternative in the form of the Nightingale. It is now one of the oldest surviving gay nightclubs in the UK.
The Camp Hill premises were rundown and dingy but protected by a strict door policy and the requirement of a membership to enter. This members-only policy allowed staff to vet who could and couldn’t enter, providing a veil of protection for the club’s regulars.
Birmingham-based drag artist Twiggy first started frequenting the Nightingale in the early 1980s, by which time it had moved to new premises on Thorp Street.
As an alternative, punky-looking person, I couldn’t get in without a member signing me in.
They were so cagey back in the ‘80s, and I think still quite paranoid about who came to the club.
Twiggy, ‘Dorothy Towers’, 2022
The AIDS crisis was looming, and fears of violence were widespread.
When Twiggy finally made it past the door staff, he was surprised by the relatively small and old-fashioned venue. The Nightingale was much cosier than Birmingham clubs like Powerhouse, which had a ‘gay night’ on Thursdays.
Still, the Thorp Street venue was memorable. You had to walk through a cobbled courtyard to get to the main dance floor, but past the toilets was another room with a shop selling poppers, clothes and gay magazines, with “youngsters, older guys and transvestites playing pool” in the corner.
Tuesday nights would see strippers take to the stage, and weekends saw the Gale play host to both regional and national drag talents, including Lily Savage.
Gradually, Birmingham’s Gay Village began taking shape throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Tucked away next to Chinatown, the network of streets forming this area was a stone’s throw from 2 imposing tower blocks, the Clydesdale and Cleveland Towers.
Opened in 1971, these social housing projects’ mostly 1 bedroom flats were located just next to a busy ring-road, making them undesirable for families and couples in search of spacious, suburban housing.
Yet their proximity to the Gay Village meant you could stumble out of a club in the early hours of the morning, walk just a few minutes and end up surrounded by fellow party-goers in an informal afterparty.
Sean Burns, a Birmingham-born artist and filmmaker, heard whispers of these tower blocks throughout his adolescence.
To locals, they’re known as the Dorothy Towers, a nod to the old-school, Wizard of Oz-inspired slang term for gay men, ‘friends of Dorothy.’ The name stuck in Burns’ mind. “It sounded like a fabulous drag queen,” he laughs. “In my head, it was almost like the buildings were a character.”
It wasn’t until the late 2010s that Burns began to research the tower blocks in earnest, resulting in the insightful, emotional 2022 film ‘Dorothy Towers‘.
The documentary is a homage to Birmingham’s expansive queer nightlife history. It also offers distinctive proof that gay clubs such as the Nightingale have played key roles in shaping LGBTQ+ friendship groups, activist networks and intimate relationships.
These histories are fraught with harassment. In one scene, residents of the towers discuss waking up to see AIDS-related smears spray-painted on the walls. In local newspapers, articles claimed that gay men were being prioritised for vital housing to the detriment of wider society. Yet these are tales of resistance and adaption, too.
Despite increased harassment during the AIDS crisis, rising rents and the widespread gentrification of Birmingham’s gay quarter, hallowed gay institutions have moved around to survive.
It wasn’t until 1999 that the Nightingale found its current home on Kent Street (by which point numerous other LGBTQ+ venues had sprung up around the city). It’s a mammoth venue with 3 levels and a choice of different dance floors.
‘It’s had half a dozen refits since opening, like when the smoking ban came into place and they had to create more outdoor space.’
Twiggy, ‘Dorothy Towers’, 2022
Developers built commercial flats nearby, leading to more noise complaints and licensing restrictions, yet Birmingham’s gay scene is still thriving.
There’s often a tendency to search solely for the ‘first’ or the ‘oldest’ gay pub or club in Britain, and even in Birmingham, Twiggy name-checks the Jester (which is now Eden, also in the Gay Village) as opening earlier than the ‘Gale, in the 1960s.
These stories remain difficult to untangle, reliant as they are on oral histories and testimonies from a generation of LGBTQ+ people so heavily decimated by the AIDS crisis.
Burns describes Birmingham’s history more broadly as “under-researched,” but community-led websites like ‘Gay Birmingham Remembered‘ and projects like Burns’ 2018 ‘In The Pink‘ make it clear that there’s plenty of LGBTQ+ history still to be excavated across the West Midlands.
The Nightingale is merely one of the best-known success stories, a building transformed from a dilapidated restaurant into the foundations of a queer nightlife institution still going strong some 5 decades later.
About the author
Jake Hall is a freelance journalist and author living in Sheffield, England. Jake’s first book, ‘The Art of Drag’, was an illustrated deep dive into the history of drag, published by NoBrow Press in 2020. Their upcoming book, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’, is a history of queer solidarity movements over the last 6 decades; it’s scheduled to be published in May 2024 by Trapeze Books.
For years, Jake has been fascinated by everything from queer culture and histories to fashion, film and climate activism, and they’ve written for publications ranging from Dazed Digital and The Independent to Refinery29 and Cosmopolitan. They’re also a keen book fan and reviewer, publishing regular reviews on their Instagram.
Further reading
- 5 Historic Places that Mark LGBTQ+ Love and Pride
- Pioneers and Rebels: 7 LGBTQ+ People in History
- Cornwall’s Surprisingly Queer Literary History
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