The Colony Room Club
41 Dean Street · Muriel Belcher’s green room
On 15 December 1948 Muriel Belcher opened a private members’ club on the first floor of 41 Dean Street with one purpose: somewhere people could be themselves. Belcher was a lesbian, her girlfriend was Jamaican, and she knew exactly what her club was for. In the worst years of state persecution, the Colony became a gin-soaked sanctuary for London’s artists, poets and queers.
Francis Bacon joined the day after it opened; Belcher joke-adopted him as her “daughter,” gave him free drinks and £10 a week to bring in paying members, and he treated the green-painted room as a second home for forty years. Dylan Thomas drank here; Lucian Freud was a member. The Colony closed in 2008 after sixty years. The room above the restaurant is unchanged; some say the mirrors are still there.