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Swindon's gay
history:
"The Rights accepted so freely today exist only because
there were some who once fought against the Wrongs."
 For
many years gay people would secretly meet up in the corner (by the
door through to the cottage - where else?) of The Fountain
pub next to the Arts Centre in Devizes Road. Kenny
Everett (But Michael, it's all done in the best possible
taste!) could be found in here at times with his partner.
Following up a discreetly worded message in the Evening
Advertiser, a gay couple, Mick & Stef, discovered this
from the small group of friends they met who would get together
for an occasional social evening. With their aptly named Bona
Disco the couple started to provide the music at some of these
new friends' parties. For a while - around 1980-81 - along with
two other gay guys they moved out of town and rented a large
isolated farmhouse in Minety. Undoubtedly some will
still remember Shades Farmhouse and the popular "anything
goes" parties that were regularly held there - with some of them
going on for two days! - especially perhaps a Halloween one
which attracted more than 250 guests from far and wide, an unheard
of number in those days.
Moving back into
Swindon in 1982, along with their many friends these four guys
helped to form Swindon Gay, a gay social and support
group which produced a monthly Newsletter and held many
social functions. The following year it became one of the first
GCOs (Gay
  Community
Organisations). Some may recall its Bona Trolls, Night Hikes,
Treasure Hunts, Tennis matches, Video Nights, Discussion Nights
(during the Cold War it was often about what to do in the event of
a nuclear attack - with gays at that time being considered as
"subversives" - later it was usually about HIV, AIDS, and Safer
Sex), Games Nights, Day Trips, Theatre Trips, even Foreign and
Camping Trips, and its many other activities along with the
countless Parties of every description. At a time when being
involved in anything gay could be detrimental to a person's
career, by dropping the first and last letters the group was often
referred to by many as WINDONGA, and thanks to the efforts
of many hard-working and devoted people, it grew up to have one
hell of a donga!
Aside from all the fun
and support work it managed, amongst its many achievements it was
responsible for gay couples being accepted in Swindon local
authority housing many years before any equality laws covered
this, and it embarrassed the local Health Authority into accepting
that AIDS actually existed and was a serious threat to people,
especially gay people. Until challenged to a debate on the local
radio station (there are still recordings of this, albeit poor
quality), AIDS was considered by the Health Authority then to be
no more than "a stupid American fad". A costly
trans-Atlantic telephone call each month (there was no Internet
then!) ensured all the latest facts and figures on HIV and AIDS
appeared in the group's newsletter. It was grim, but compulsive
reading - and it came at a time when we started to lose friends,
many close friends, to this virus we knew so little about.
Later, when it became
fashionable for local authorities to provide funding for gay
support projects, the group refused financial assistance,
preferring to remain totally independent. For this group at least,
it was a very wise choice. Although in theory (and at times
financially) it supported the subsequently created
"one-size-fits-all" projects with trained counsellors funded by
the public purse, there were many occasions on which it had to
pick up the pieces after they came up seriously wanting. The group
existed for more than 15 years, until the expanding commercial
scene, and no doubt the growing use of the Internet too, made the
social side of it unsustainable.
Level 3, under
the Rolleston Arms in Commercial Road, hosted the first
regular commercial gay disco nights in Swindon. Run as an entirely
separate concern by a group member, Alan Osbourne (forgive the
spelling if it is wrong), "Mondays at Level 3" became
known nationwide and, considering the poor weekday it was held on,
for a long while it had a very good following. It was through one
of the
 many
Cabaret
events held here, and those came both good and bad - anyone
remember the Punch & Judy night? No, don't! - that Swindon
first fell in love with Miss Candy Du Barry, sadly no
longer with us (since 1991). Candy became a Swindon favourite and
was invited back many times. Once, at the group's Christmas (or
was it New Year?) Bash at the Moonrakers (only used for its
large function room) she fought to be there where others would
have given up, arriving extremely late after her car came off the
road in a heavy snowstorm. A great trouper, sadly missed!
With still no official
gay pub in Swindon, but with extra numbers of people now to be
found on the hidden little scene there was, before long the bar
next to Riflemans Hotel in Regent Street (by the Savoy
- then still a cinema, I believe) became adopted as an
unofficial gay pub. By now a growing commercial scene in the towns
and cities around Swindon had seen the numbers at Level 3 fall,
and soon it was forced to close its gay Monday nights (Gloucester
was doing a Monday night too). Around this time, after eighteen
years together the splitting up of Mick & Stef came as a shock to
their many friends, and so it was Mick & Joe who provided a
replacement for the soon much missed Mondays at Level 3 by hiring
the Sheraton Suite in East Street every Wednesday night and
setting up their disco in there. Now renamed - Joe thought that
Bona Disco was far too camp! - it was the Junction 16 Roadshow,
because they lived close to that junction of the M4
motorway. For Swindon it was a resounding success numbers-wise,
but not financially as the expenses were astronomical and the two
guys had to subsidise it heavily out of their own pockets. However
 that
didn't stop a few people bitching, believing the commercial event
was being financially supported by the gay group - an utter
impossibility as the losses would have totally wiped out the
group's meagre funds in a matter of weeks. Sadly, all scenes seem
to have their bitches to suffer, don't they?
Time moved on, the
Sheraton's owners closed the venue to convert it into a full-time
nightclub, and Swindon was once more without a weekly gay disco.
Several weeks later, after having hired the Pentagon at the
back of the White House pub (it used to be by the low
bridges of Corporation Street) for Friday nights and installing a
permanent disco lighting system in there, the Junction 16 weekly
discos were back. It was an equally expensive venture, the late
licence was a supper licence so food had to be paid for too, but
it was still a great success - despite the landlord not being the
most amicable person on the planet - and taken overall, after
cabaret costs etc, it broke even. Some may still have the video of
a Charity Event held there one Saturday where before the
disco Mud Wrestling took place in an attached marquee. The
contestants were supposed to have remained clothed,
but within a very short time it was a fun-melee of limbs and naked
attributes (of both sexes) sticking out of the mud at all angles.
I'd swear more things dangled there that day than from any
chandelier Liberace could ever have owned. Later on, a "stop the
music for a show of underpants and knickers" competition on the
dance floor had one of the good sports overly embarrassed - she
had previously lost hers somewhere in the mud. Whoops! On this one
day a Swindon record (at that time) of something like a thousand
pounds was raised for charity, with the bulk of it going to
SPACE (Swindon Project for Aids Counselling and Education).
During the time of the
discos at the Pentagon, the Cricketers Arms in Emlyn Square
was opened up as Swindon's first totally gay pub by the
Bristol firm that owned the Queen's Shilling pubs. It
was an enormous success, although later on the company suffered
financial trouble and were forced to pull out of several of their
ventures, including this one. The success of the pub brought more
people to the disco, however now they didn't turn up until the pub
closed - and that made the landlord at the Pentagon very unhappy.
Unsuccessfully - only about twenty-odd people ever turned up - he
was already trying to run a gay night for himself on Saturdays in
competition to the Junction 16 Friday nights. When he wanted to
increase the Friday hire charge, almost doubling it, Junction 16
pulled out, and within a few weeks had managed to hire a
full-blown nightclub that was going into receivership: New
York, New York, opposite the Wyvern on Theatre Square.
It was a rough area of
a night, indeed the club had fallen on hard times following a
major fight outside of it where there had been stabbings and a
number of police injured. However J16 had a following too,
and the gay people turned up. It was an extremely successful
venture, and it soon killed off the Saturday nights at the
Pentagon. These Friday nights continued at New York, New York
without any trouble for nearly two years, until the receivership
matters were completed with the club being sold.
 Following
the demise of the Queen's Shilling locally, the brewery kept the
pub as gay, with several gay and lesbian couples becoming
landlords there over the years. Somebody made a couple of
attempts to turn the Steak House behind the Great
Western Hotel by the rail station into a gay club, but it was
far too small and failed miserably. Meanwhile Junction 16 had
started to buy a property in nearby Milton Road to turn
into a permanent two storey gay nightclub for the town. It had a
viable business plan (kindly drawn up and donated by Swindon's
well-respected Chartered Accountants:
Cornaby & Robinson), the finance arranged, all the plans
drawn up and approved by the fire and local authorities, and the
necessary planning permission which had involved getting a
majority of councillors agreeable to change the rules because
whilst the back of the building was in a permitted area to have a
club without a car park, the front was not. It even had a manager
lined up - a favourite young guy from the Queen's Shilling days,
at that time working in Bristol. But then the bitching started.
Instigated by the then landlords of the Cricketers, a few people
began stirring up trouble by complaining the nightclub would kill
the pub. The Queen's Shilling had already proven that the punters
would only go to the club after the pub had closed, but that
mattered not to those employed to cause trouble, so rather than
divide the gay scene Junction 16 dropped the whole idea and never
again bothered to put on another gay disco night in Swindon. It
was several years later, nearly five actually, before the town had
its first dedicated gay nightclub, in London Street.
Useless Information:
There was a time in the
80s when the only contact outside of London listed by Spartacus
for the whole of the UK was Mick & Stef along with their Swindon
telephone number.
Useless Information:
Alan was not available
to do it at the time, so during Junction 16's era at the Pentagon,
by arrangement with the landlord of the Rolleston Arms, Dave
Sears, J16 concurrently resurrected Mondays at Level 3 in its old
home for just a few weeks in response to the wishes of a dear
friend suffering from AIDS.
Useless Information:
Although entirely
separate entities, J16 and SGCO often worked closely together to
raise money for various charities. Over the years those who
benefited included, but were not limited to: Swindon Project for
Aids Counselling and Education, Swindon Gay Men's Health Project,
Thamesdown Lesbian & Gay Line, Aled Richards Trust, Terrence
Higgins Trust, and the local Samaritans. Perhaps one of the most
spiritually rewarding to receive money were the SPIKES children
(physical and learning disabilities) who used a hired room at the
County Ground Football Stadium. There are no words to adequately
describe the afternoon spent with these youngsters.
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