The UK LGBT History Project records the history and memories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people living in the UK.
It's a virtual time-capsule, capturing the experiences of our time, and a chronicle of the achievements and challenges of previous centuries – the changing law, the amazing response to health epidemics, the newspapers and magazines that come and go, TV programmes, sports, lesbian, gay, bi and trans businesses, arts, music and theatre, events, pubs and clubs, and of course the amazing diversity of people who have had a part in our history.
The project was launched in June 2011. It was re-launched as The UK LGBT Archive in December 2015, but reverted to it's original name a decade later.[1]
In 2015 this project became a Key Partner of LGBT History Month.[2] and CHE voted to support it.[3] In February 2016 Ross Burgess read a paper about this site at the LGBT History Month academic conference in Manchester.
By early 2021, articles on this Wiki had been viewed twenty million times. They've now exceeded 46 million.
Finding information
There are several ways to find information on this site. Note that anywhere you see a word or phrase in blue, you can click on it and be taken to the item in question. If you see words in red, they are links to an article that hasn't been written yet.
browse by category: to get an overview of the range of material that we cover, go to Category:Main categories.
browse by area of the country: our map on the United Kingdom page gives an overview of our geographical coverage, and our maps of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland give links to places round the country.
take pot luck: use the Random page link at the left.
search for a particular item, using the search box at the top right of the page.
Who is writing it?
You could be – and we'd love you to join us.
The LGBT History Project is written and maintained by volunteers from all walks of life, all ages, and all parts of the UK. You don't need to be an academic, a professional writer, or an expert. You just need to care about LGBT history – and ideally know something about a part of it that isn't well covered yet.
What can you write about?
Almost anything connected to LGBT life in the UK: pubs, clubs, businesses, venues, newspapers, organisations, campaigns, legal battles, sport, art, music, local history. If you ran a gay club, organised an event, worked for an LGBT charity, or simply remember a time and a place that shaped your life – that knowledge belongs here.
We also welcome first-person Vox Pop accounts: your coming-out story, your memory of the first gay bar you visited, what it was like growing up LGBT somewhere that had nothing going on at all. These personal accounts are genuinely valuable – academics call them "qualitative primary sources," but what that really means is: your experience matters, and it should be recorded before it's lost.
Getting started
To contribute, you'll need to request a free account – this takes just a moment to set up, but it may take us a day or two to approve it, as each one is reviewed to make sure we don't let spam advertisers in. We ask for your real name (kept private unless you choose otherwise), and we ask all contributors to follow our Editorial Policy, Style Guide and Image Rights Policy.
If you're new to wiki editing, don't worry – the basics are easy to pick up, and we're here to help. Your first articles may be reviewed by an experienced contributor before they go live, not to put obstacles in your way, but to give you a helping hand and make sure everything looks its best. Once you've found your feet, you'll be able to publish freely.
Wherever possible, please note your sources so that others can follow them up – a link, a book title, a newspaper reference. For personal memories, simply noting "personal recollection" is fine.
Editors Club
We run a monthly Editors Club – an informal one-hour online meeting on the third Wednesday of each month (starting September 2026), 19:00–20:00 (UK time), via Google Meet. It's a friendly space to ask questions, share ideas for new articles, and meet other contributors. Prospective editors are welcome before their account is approved.
Lesbian & Gay Pride '94 was held in London on 25 June 1994, with a march from Hyde Park through the West End and a festival in Brockwell Park, Herne Hill. It was organised by the Pride Trust.
This article draws on the official Pride map produced for the event by JWH Design, which recorded the march route, the transport arrangements and a detailed plan of the festival site.
London 1994 LGBT venues: This is a transcription of the listings printed on the reverse of the Back Pocket Guide to Gay & Lesbian London, issue 4, published in July 1994 by JWH Design and given away free in London's gay venues. It records the bars, clubs, cafés, restaurants, shops, saunas and theatres trading in London at that date, together with the short descriptions printed alongside each entry, and is reproduced here as a dated snapshot of the scene.
In the original, an asterisk marked a venue lying outside the area covered by the map, and ★NEW★ marked one newly opened. A copy of the guide is held by the Wellcome Collection.
London 1993 LGBT Venues: This is a transcription of the listings printed on the reverse of the Back Pocket Guide to Gay & Lesbian London, issue 2, published in autumn 1993 by JWH Design and given away free in London's gay venues. It records the bars, clubs, cafés, restaurants, shops, saunas and hotels trading in London at that date, and is reproduced here as a dated snapshot of the scene. Venues marked ★NEW★ in the original were newly opened.
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.
George Montague: George Montague (5 June 1923 – 18 March 2022) was a British gay rights campaigner, known as the Oldest Gay in the Village. Convicted of gross indecency in 1974, he campaigned for many years for the government to apologise to the men convicted under such laws rather than merely pardon them, and received an apology from the Home Office in 2017. He was a founder member of the Sailing and Cruising Association and a familiar figure at Brighton Pride, where he took part in the parade each year on a rainbow-draped mobility scooter.
Gay Social Men (Ipswich): Gay Social Men (GSM) is a social group for gay men in Ipswich, East Anglia and Essex, founded in 2022.
The group was established by a married couple who had moved to Suffolk, and grew out of the difficulty many of its early members described in meeting people locally, particularly those who had relocated to the area during the coronavirus pandemic. It runs regular social events in and around Ipswich, and holds a bimonthly gathering at the Thomas Wolsey public house in the town, which members of the Sailing and Cruising Association on the East Coast also attend.[4]
GSM describes its purpose as friendship, support and connection rather than dating, and publishes a set of group guidelines to that effect. These state that the group is for gay men, a boundary the organisers explain as making room for a group often overlooked when it comes to connection and belonging rather than as excluding anyone; that it is not a space for seeking hook-ups or making unsolicited contact; and that members' personal details and stories are not to be shared outside the group.[4]
The group maintains a presence on Facebook and Instagram, where its founders use the collective nickname the FAGS.[4]
Stuart Linden Rhodes: Stuart Linden Rhodes is a British photographer and writer who documented the lesbian and gay scene of the 1990s, working under the byline Linden. His photographs, now known collectively as the Linden Archives, form one of the fullest surviving visual records of the period, particularly in the north of England.
Gay Lifestyles Exhibition: The Gay Lifestyles Exhibition was an annual consumer exhibition for the lesbian and gay market, held in London from 1992.
By 1994 the exhibition was in its third year. Writing in The Independent in November of that year, the journalist Mark Simpson cited it as evidence that style and grooming products had been marketed to gay men well before they were marketed to heterosexual ones, noting that it featured fashion shows and a range of men's products. The article in which he did so, "Here Come the Mirror Men", was the piece in which he coined the term metrosexual.[5]
The 1994 exhibition, branded Gay Lifestyles '94, was held at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 December 1994. Exhibitor packs were issued by an organiser identified in advertising only as CMA, with a telephone and fax number in the Henley-on-Thames area.[6]
Exhibitors included the Back Pocket Guide, the free gay street map of London, which took a stall in both 1993 and 1994. The photographer Stuart Linden Rhodes photographed the 1994 exhibition; his images show stalls including one for an HIV and AIDS charity.[7]
For a full list of recent additions, see New Pages.
Did you know?
Edward White Benson
Edward White Benson (pictured), Archbishop of Canterbury, is thought to have been a repressed homosexual; his wife, his brother-in-law, and five of his children were almost certainly gay or lesbian.
Chelsea Manning, American soldier serving 35 years in gaol for leaking military secrets, went to school in Haverfordwest.
The poet Lord Byron swam from Europe to Asia in 1810, which is said to have started the sport of open water swimming.
The Ladies of Llangollen eloped from their families in 1780 and lived together for the rest of their lives.
Sex between men was illegal in the Isle of Man until 1992.
The sixth-century King Maelgwn of Gwynedd in North Wales was described as "addicted very much to the detestable vice of sodomy".
Princess Seraphina (c. 1700–unknown) was referred to as "her royal highness" by witnesses at the Old Bailey in 1732 – one of the earliest documented accounts of a gender-nonconforming identity in British history.
Roberta Cowell (1918–2011) was a Spitfire pilot and prisoner of war before becoming the first known British person to undergo gender reassignment surgery, in 1951 – two years before the more widely reported case of Christine Jorgensen in Denmark.
Alan Turing, who helped break the German Enigma codes at Bletchley Park, was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 and given a choice between prison and chemical castration. He now appears on the £50 note.
Chris Smith became the first MP to openly come out as gay when he did so in 1984, while serving as Member for Islington South and Finsbury.
Michael Dillon won a rowing blue at Oxford as a woman, then after transitioning won another at Trinity College Dublin on the men's team. When his history became public in 1958 he fled to India and was ordained as a Buddhist monk.
Oscar Wilde was prompted to sue the Marquess of Queensberry for libel after receiving a card at his club reading "posing somdomite" – the Marquess's own misspelling. The case collapsed and led directly to Wilde's arrest and conviction in 1895.
Coming soon…
We are launching our very own mobile app! It’s not a mini wikipedia. It’s a different way for people to engage with LGBT history. It will feature geofenced walking tours. Sites of interest will pop up on your phone (when the app is on) to tell you about your surroundings – or you can take one of the many guided walking tours.
All text in this wiki is freely reusable with certain provisos – see LGBT Archive:Copyrights. Some of the images may be subject to copyright restrictions. See LGBT Archive:Illustrations.
Please email us if you consider we have infringed your copyright.
