London has seven rainbow plaques, the vivacious alternative to blue that commemorates significant people and places in LGBTQIA+ history. The most recent was unveiled last week remembering broadcaster, comedian, drag queen, dog lover and national treasure Paul O'Grady.
Should you want to track down all seven this Pride month🏳️🌈, here's where they all are.[8 photos]
Paul O'Grady's plaque appears on a mansion block in Vauxhall, informally known as Vicky Mansions. He moved into a council flat here in 1985, the same year he gained a Thursday residency at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, and moved out in 1995 because it wasn't convenient enough for The Big Breakfast. The plaque's immediately beside the staircase to flats 70-93, which probably wasn't protected by a sturdy security door at the time, and like all the rainbow plaques has an information panel alongside to explain more than can be shown in a small roundel. It was unveiled last Friday by his widower in front of an appreciative audience including the writer of a new musical about Paul's life (who's also responsible for plaque number seven). And it's just a three minute walk from here to plaque number two...
My Beautiful Laundrette was written by Hanif Kureishi, starred Daniel Day Lewis and Gordon Warnecke and bubbled up in the early days of Channel 4. It told the story of a young Asian entrepreneur taking on a small business with the help of a punk former classmate, back when Pakistani home life and mixed race gay couples weren't normally the stuff of mainstream television. The laundrette Omar and Johnny transformed into a neon-lit palace was called Powders and it was located in the area called Little Portugal, just opposite where Nine Elms station is today. I blogged about this rainbow plaque in 2022 when it was still embedded in the pavement outside the shuttered unit where filming took place, but also noted that the council's intention was to replace this lowly parade with a stack of 22 affordable flats. That rebuilding is now almost complete, none of the flats are affordable and the plaque has been moved to a more visible location beside a non-evocative fire exit. It's not yet clear if any of the ground floor units will be occupied by a laundrette but I seriously doubt it.
London's first rainbow plaque appeared in 2019, following a long campaign by Wandsworth LGBTQ+ Forum, and hundreds of people stand beside it every day while waiting for a train. It's on platform 10 at Clapham Junction, near the stairs, and commemorates the occasion in 1895 when Oscar Wilde waited for a train while on his way from Wandsworth Prison to Reading Gaol. He'd been convicted of gross indecency with men, an offence which would remain on the statute book until 1967, and sentenced to two years hard labour. What made this moment particularly character-sapping is that a crowd of people recognised him, jeered and spat for half an hour until the 2.30 train arrived.
It wouldn't have been called homophobic abuse at the time, but it was traumatic enough that Oscar wept in his cell at 2pm every day for a year afterwards.
In the 1980s an HIV diagnosis was often a death sentence so money was raised to build a hub to act as both health centre and hospice. The London Lighthouse replaced a derelict primary school in Ladbroke Grove and was formally opened by Princess Margaret in 1988 (Princess Di preferring to make private visits). Upstairs were facilities for 23 patients and downstairs were day-care and drop-in, also a cafe space and shady garden. Advances in treatment in the 1990s meant the focus shifted to lifelong support and in 2000 the charity merged with the Terrence Higgins Trust who stayed until 2013. The current downstairs tenant is the very excellent Museum of Brands, hence the cunningly wrong-branded artwork painted across the front of the building. But anyone can walk in and use the Lighthouse Cafe, which is definitely pleasanter than most, and also wander through to the garden where many former residents had their ashes scattered. For a reflective visit take a seat by the rosebed and admire the dense shrubbery, now fully mature, whilst also checking out whose memorial bench you're sitting on.
JackieForster was an actress, news reporter and Border TV presenter, also one of 200 people who took part in London's first official Pride march in 1972. That same year she founded Sappho, a social group for lesbians (based in a Notting Hill pub) and also published a monthly magazine of the same name. Few lesbians were publicly visible at the time and Jackie's media training made her an excellent campaigning ambassador. It took me a while to find her house because there's a massive gap between 42 and 44 Warwick Avenue, and then I sighed because the curse of 'historic home under scaffolding' had hit again. It means Jackie's rainbow plaque is currently covered by grey tape for its own protection so if you want to see where she lived for 21 years best come back when they've finished.
The BLGC started out in 1985 in Haringey, a strongly supportive borough, and was founded in response to "the overwhelming whiteness of the 'mainstream' LGBTQ+ scene". In 1992 they leased this converted railway arch just beyond the end of Peckham Rye station, and used it for a library, a telephone helpline and a safe social drop-in space. The first centre of its kind in Europe, in its three year history it was involved in many groundbreaking campaigns and managed to spread its influence far beyond the capital. These days the arches instead focus on MOTs, artisanal butchery, Jiu-Jitsu, pottery and the maintenance of dumbwaiter systems, so quite a change. It's also unclear whether anyone was ever amused by the Centre being in Bellenden Road, which is now a seriously gentrified street.
And finally to a pub on the corner of Greenwich Park which appeared in a key scene in a seminal film released 30 years ago this month. Beautiful Thing started out as a stage play, then was adapted by writer Jonathan Harvey as a film for Channel 4 and filmed almost entirely in Thamesmead. The chief exception was Ste and Jamie's first date at The Gloucester, a bus ride away in SE10, where the schoolboys were duly purred over by the drag queen. The pub's since changed its name to The Greenwich Tavern and embraced a mainstream tourist clientele, serving up gourmet burgers rather than catty backchat, and when the menu says 'Onion Ring £6' I think that's deliberately singular. Of all the seven rainbow-rimmed plaques it's the highest-up and hardest to read, but I guess they couldn't put it in Thamesmead because barely any of the filming locations are still standing.
There's supposed to be one more rainbow plaque at Haringey Civic Centre, remembering the borough's innovative Lesbian and Gay Unit and its campaign against Section 28, but the building's been undergoing major redevelopment since 2020 and maybe they'll add it when they're finished.
