Fabulous Grosvenor
1972
Certainly we had some jolly good parties in private houses and there was a fabulous old mansion opened up on the Hagley Road called the Grosvenor House Hotel with parking for about twenty cars and a swimming pool, tennis courts (1971). It was strictly controlled, it was quite expensive to join and it only opened on Fridays and Saturdays as gay but it was a hotel during the week, but they didn’t take bookings except for gay people at the weekends, swinging. You used to have fetes and there was an enormous ballroom where I taught John to dance, taught him to waltz, in fact, because he could only do the quick jiving but, of course, I wanted to teach him ballroom dancing. Occasionally they would get raided because at one stage the very suggestion that you were gay was enough for you to end up in jail, you know, because you were homosexuals. I don’t mean we were all thrown in prison every night but the very suggestion that you were gay could be enough. I have no personal experience of this but I think the fact that gay was against the law, therefore, you were breaking the law being gay, end of story. I think by the time you’d gone to a known coffee house you’re half way there anyway and there were a lot of people like me, bloody minded, who would not put up with it.”
Contributed by: Robin McGarry, 66