New Concorde, Bermondsey

When you start looking for them, it seems, Pubs That Are Shut are everywhere (particularly in the SE16 area). We stumbled across this beauty during one of our biannual jogging sessions around the Bermondsey backstreets. Of its no doubt rich history, little is known: Googling the pub name didn't really tell us anything, although a quick search of Southwark's planning database revealed that it is being converted into flats.

Our favourite feature of the New Concorde is the sign on the front of the building which reads, in elegant script, "Live Music Weekends - Family Entertainment - Licensed for fun"*, over which somebody has plastered, in authoritarian Helvetica, "Warning - Keep out".

* Before 1997, premises in Britain hosting "fun" had to apply for a special licence. Almost all were refused.


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