Harp Club Archives - Brockley SE4

Featured local business - Clubtek

Forest

SE23

Hill

I was already a regular visitor to Clubtek’s DJ shop when it was in Penge, but now they're even handier in Stanstead Road, just a few doors down from Shannon’s Garden Centre - another old favourite. It’s by no means just for DJs and bands...

RIP Colin Jerwood – SE London punk legend

Jun

2025

Colin Jerwood, lead singer with South London anarcho-punk band Conflict, has died. At their 1980s peak they were very influential in the punk scene and famously once played a huge gig at Brixton Academy in 1987 ('The gathering of the 5000') which ended with 52 arrests and fighting with the police in the streets outside.I ...

Gizelle – from Lovers Rock to Acid House

Jul

2024

Another great episode of DJ Controlled Weirdness' Tales from a Disappearing City podcast, this time featuring DJ Gizelle, aka Rebel Yelle. As I've said before what I like about this series is how it shows the ways people's lives connect together all these different scenes which people see as separate, and Gizelle has had quite ...

A young Irish woman in Lewisham, 1959

Dec

2023

Leaving aside the dubious framing of this story ('workaday beauties' ffs), some nice local detail of a young Irish women's life in Lewisham 1959 - Mary O'Donoghue from Cork working in the Robertson Jam Factory in Catford and socialising at the Harp Club in New Cross

Yesterday is Now History – materials from a Lewisham archive

Jun

2014

I went to the opening of a fantastic exhibition today at 310 NX Road Gallery, New Cross SE14 6AF:'Yesterday is Now History, curated by artist Eleanor Davies and anthropologist/historian Sophie Parker, is a celebration of the everyday objects that we frequently take for granted, or think of as rubbish. These often overlooked objects tell a ...

More New Cross Venue Memories

Jan

2014

Over at the great Irish blog Cedar House Revolution, I came across some more recollections of the Venue in New Cross (see previous posts on this subject, especially comments here).Damian O’Broin recalls that he 'spent the summer of 1990 – and the one before it – working on building sites in London' and that he ...

New Cross Acid House 1989

Oct

2013

From the excellent Phatmedia archive of Old Skool and Rave flyers, here's one from 1989 - 'A Touch Above presents Asylum Acid House', Fridays at the Harp Club (now the Venue - see previous discussion on its pre-history). From the same year (15 April 1989), here's a flyer for Subconscious 'Deep House, Garage and Fundamental-Mind Beats' ...