Wandering past the artisan coffee shops and trendy pubs of Stoke Newington, it is hard to imagine that the area used to be what Dan de la Motte calls “a lesbian Mecca”.
“There’s queer history beneath your every footstep in Stoke Newington,” says de la Motte, who is co-director of Queer Tours of London. Queer Tours have worked with local charity Unity Arts to produce Stokey’s first ever queer walking tour, commissioned by Hackney council for LGBTQ+ History Month. I sat down with de la Motte to learn about Stokey’s most fabulous historical spots.
“Stoke Newington has a deep and rich history of dissent and dissenters,” he says. “The first stop is the town hall, because of the lesbian and gay support involved in ‘Pits and Perverts Support the Miners’ performances and galas, which happened there in the 1980s.”
The money raised at those galas was sent up North to support the families of striking miners, something that de la Motte says highlights “the solidarity between marginalized groups on display in Stoke Newington”.
Abney Park Cemetery is one of the “Magnificent Seven” garden cemeteries in London and was the backdrop to Amy Winehouse’s iconic “Back to Black” music video.
“That stop is not only about her being a bisexual star but also her fitting into this canon of extremely talented, one-of-a-kind women musical artists who were lost long before their time. There’s a huge amount of affinity between gay men and so-called ‘broken women’.”
Walking down Casanova Road, the question of long-lost lesbian spaces comes into focus.
“There was a very high proportion of lesbian residents in Stoke Newington and a very high proportion of lesbian bars, for example, Blush Bar,” de la Motte says.
“Most of these lesbian spaces have closed down. Why have lesbian spaces in particular closed down? And hey, guess what? The answer is, folks, misogyny and the patriarchy,” de la Motte says. “We very much deliberately chose to tour Stoke Newington to counter that invisibilisation and erasure.”
After the success of the first tour, he confirms there are “definitely more tours” in the works. Keep an eye on the Queer Tours of London’s Twitter and booking site to take part in the next one.
