‘Revered and mythologised’: How the spirit of South London LGBTQ space The Chateau lives on years after closure

I’ll always remember 14 March 2020. The day we walked out of The Chateau – our beloved South London LGBTQ bar and performance space – and never came back.

To think of The Chateau’s original much loved space in Camberwell now, is a bittersweet feeling.

A space that closed over three years ago, but still seems to hold a revered quality in the hearts of so many queers that I meet. It has been almost mythologised, especially and most ironically by those that never even stepped foot inside.

I’ve spent many days since then trying to distill what that space meant, and what it means for the future. The importance it held to me, to our amazing team, to the community that surrounded itself around that chaotic but beautiful basement.

To think of that original space now is to think of so much collective joy, so much collective pain, the weight of a community filled with need placed on a space that could at times barely hold its own weight. It is to think deeply of sustainability, how spaces such as ours struggle to keep afloat whilst empty skyscrapers and luxury apartments accumulate themselves around us.

This sustainability I come back to a lot these days, both in the financial sense; the astonishing expense of bricks and mortar in this city, but also the personal; what those who are involved in running these spaces give, in order to house the joyous weight of a community.

Running The Chateau’s basement space for nearly two years was both the most fulfilling experience of my life, but also broke me, emotionally and physically, as it did for some who worked around me. Should this be necessary? This exchange of personal wellbeing to satisfy a deeply ingrained collective need to share space? It is the symptom of a system that rarely truly supports grassroots culture, that forces us to rely on a broken capitalist model to keep space for culture alive. 

As you can tell I’m in a reflective mood, as we move towards hosting our first standalone club night since we closed The Chateau space in 2020. In all honesty I didn’t really think we’d ever get back to this point, and so to have done so feels momentous. This party will celebrate five years of The Chateau, and five rollercoaster years of creating space for queers in Southeast London, both in the basement and beyond those walls, in all the work we have done since.

And so for one night only we will reopen The Chateau at Christine & The Queens Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre, to present SE_XCELLENCE, an ecstatic celebration of Southeast London’s queer underground, bringing together some of our most exciting collectives, crews, DJs and performers for a huge queer throw down. Paying homage to five years of The Chateau and all it stands for, but also platforming a burgeoning queer scene that is rapidly growing in Southeast London.

A scene that is often not accounted for in the discussions around loss of queer space that have so often become fodder for well-meaning publications. SE_XCELLENCE epitomises the spirit of queer Southeast London, a scene that now revolves around exceptional DIY venues such as Venue MOT, Avalon Cafe, Matchstick Piehouse, the Triangle LGBTQ+ Cultural Centre. Plus groundbreaking nights Big Dyke Energy, Switch Rising, Portals, WET, Qwe’re and Testo Hunkie, most of whom prioritise those more in need within our community. The creativity and innovation of these nights is electric, and together on 9 June we will celebrate them, and we will celebrate us.

The Chateau Presents SE_XCELLENCE takes place on Friday 9 Jun, 10.30pm, as part of Christine and the Queens’ Meltdown and its series of Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer Gigs.