From G-A-Y Bar to Coven
One address, a compressed history
This address holds a compressed version of Soho’s recent queer history. From 1993 it was G-A-Y Bar, the street-level branch of Jeremy Joseph’s empire – cheap drinks, pop music, a soft landing for anyone walking into a gay bar for the first time. It closed in October 2025, its owner citing a Soho that had “lost its vibrancy.”
Nine months later Matthew Jacobs Morgan, who had run Coven as a Hackney club night, opened a five-floor LGBTQ+ community space at the same address: a daytime café that becomes, by night, a space for cabaret, live music and themed nights, with an antique fountain full of queer-history books in the entrance. Coven opened on 19 June 2026. The address isn’t empty; the neon is new; the story continues.