Lyon's Coventry Street Corner House

Lyon's Coventry Street Cornerhouse was a respectable,myet affordable, hangout for middle class gay men in London's West End. It's clientele comprised clerks, shop assistants, workmen, civil servants and the metropolitan intelligentsia. Painted boys could be found in amongst more discreet men.

Other clubs and pubs popular with homosexuals at the time were the York Minster, the Swiss and the Marquis of Granby in Soho. Peter Wildeblood called them "less [than] discreet", rough and cruisy. Throughout the 1930s respectable men in evening dress and camp queans solicited sailors and workmen in the Running Horse. Other venues included the Billie's Club, the Hungry Horse, Gerano's in New Compton Street, Chez Victor in Wardour Street. The downstairs bar at the Ritz Hotel was frequented by men from high society, nicknamed l’Abri (the shelter), and the Trocadero Long Bar, another Lyon's Cornerhouse.

References

Queer London – Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 Matt Houlbrook, The University of Chicago Press, 2005.