London · Walking tour

Molly Houses – Georgian Gay London

Before there was a word for it, there was a world. In the taverns, alehouses and back rooms of Georgian London, men who desired men – mollies – met to drink, dance, take maiden names and marry one another in mock ceremonies. This walk follows the sites of the molly houses named in the records, from Mother Clap’s in Holborn to the White Swan in Vere Street, across a city that policed them hard and never stamped them out. Almost every building is gone; the pins mark where they stood. Drawn from the LGBT History Project’s research and Rictor Norton’s history of the subculture.

15 stops

1 Peggy and Pru – King Street · 1720s
2 The Royal Oak – St James’s Square
3 Judith’s – Windmill Street
4 Julius Cesar Taylor – Tottenham Court Road
5 The Three Tobacco Rolls – Drury Lane · 1720s
6 Mrs Holder’s Night-Cellar
7 Marygold Court – off the Strand · 1728
8 The White Swan – Vere Street
9 Mother Clap’s – Field Lane
10 Plump Nelly – Giltspur Street · 1726
11 Thomas Wright’s House – Beech Lane
12 Christopher’s Alley – Moorfields
13 Sukey Bevell’s – the Mint, Southwark · 1728
14 A House near Billingsgate · 1728
15 Miss Muff – Black Lion Yard

Part of LGBT History UK