From Brixton Central newsletter, October 2004 (unpublished)
Regeneration charity aims to save landmark
Bradys bar in Atlantic Road was loved for decades as a thriving, friendly community pub. It had an impressive reputation as a live music venue: legend has it Jimi Hendrix played there in the ’60s.
Now owned by the council, it stands empty and rotting.
Lambeth now plans to pull down this beautiful Victorian building, whose six-sided clocktower is a Brixton landmark, and build flats on the site.
A group of central Brixton residents wants to save Bradys and reopen it as a much-needed community centre and venue. It is forming a charity to attract National Lottery funding into the neighbourhood.
Vaudeville tradition
Central Brixton resident _____ _______ said: “Brixton used to have six theatres and a famous vaudeville tradition. One of my neighbours ‘trod the boards’ for 50 years.
“Yet the area has no theatre, no major community centre, no arts centre and no music school.
If local people don’t get together to provide these facilities, no-one else will.
“Large sums of lottery funding should be flowing into Brixton, which is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Britain.”
The aim of the new charity is to avoid the mistakes made by the Brixton Challenge initiative and to establish a major charity that remains firmly under the control of local people.