The Champion

The Champion is a public house at 1 Wellington Terrace on the Bayswater Road, London W2, close to Notting Hill Gate. For some four decades, until 2004, it was one of London's best-known gay pubs.

Building

The pub was established in 1838 and is said to have been built on the site of an open-air boxing ring, from which it takes its name. It retains substantial historic features, notably its windows, and has a sunken courtyard garden at the rear.

Gay pub

The Champion was a gay pub from the 1960s until 2004, drawing custom from across London. In its later years as a gay venue it ran a happy hour, held cabaret every three weeks and had pool tables; the interior was informally furnished, with sofas and low tables, and there was live music during the week.

The Sailing and Cruising Association, founded in 1980, held its monthly meetings at the Champion for most of 1981, having moved there from the Dickens Inn at St Katharine Docks and before settling at the King's Arms in Poland Street.

Personal recollection

I was on a college trip to London in 1987, staying around the corner in Leinster Square. I snuck out from my college friends two nights running to visit this, my first gay pub. It was a very traditional English pub, warm and cosy, dark heavy upholstery. I was nineteen. I was welcomed by a group of men at the table at the front, chatty and friendly. One of them told me I had an admirer, but that I had better be careful, as he was a submariner. The reason was left to my imagination. Walking back to the lodgings, someone followed me all the way home, on the opposite side of the road along Hyde Park. That scared the living daylights out of me.

– Jonathan Harbourne, who first visited the pub in 1987 · recorded 2026

Queen and the Mercury Lounge

The pub was frequented in the 1970s by musicians including members of Queen and the Clash. The downstairs room, on the way to the garden, is named the Mercury Lounge after Freddie Mercury, and the pub maintains that the song "We Are the Champions" was written there, displaying a copy of the score on the wall. The pub's name, however, considerably predates the song.

Since 2004

The Champion ceased to be a gay pub in 2004 and now trades as a general public house, though its own account of its history acknowledges its years as one of London's iconic gay venues.

Personal memories

The first gay pub I ever went to. These are intended to be gathered in a section at the foot of a venue article, under a heading such as "Personal memories". A page may carry many of them. — A.B., 1992