This popular music venue was at 234 Kilburn High Road, on the corner of Messina Avenue. Many famous musicians including Johnny Cash and David Bowie played there. We look at the original building which was the Grange Cinema, and what happened when the National closed and was taken over by two different church groups.
Grange Cinema
The
Grange was a large mansion standing in grounds
of nine and a half acres and with a frontage to Kilburn High Road. It was the home of Ada Peters the widow of a
wealthy coach builder who made coaches for Queen Victoria. Following Ada’s death in 1910, the property
was sold. The new owner was Oswald Stoll, a
major name in the entertainment world who had already built the London Coliseum
in St Martin’s Lane, near Leicester Square. Stoll wanted to erect another Coliseum theatre in
Kilburn. In fact, progress overtook him and instead of a theatre, the 2,028
seat Grange cinema opened on 30 July 1914.
This remained the biggest cinema in Kilburn until the huge Gaumont State opened in December 1937 with over 4,000 seats making it
the largest cinema in Europe. The Grange cinema finally closed on 14 June 1975.
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| Grange Cinema in the 1930s |
Butty’s Club and Dance Hall
Michael
‘Butty’ Sugrue, who ran the Admiral Nelson pub in Carlton Vale Kilburn and the Wellington in Shepherd’s Bush, opened his
club in the old Grange Cinema on 31 December 1975. As a Kerry man he particularly
catered for the Irish community. He was a wrestler, circus performer and was
known as ‘Ireland’s Strongest Man’, able to lift four 56lb weights attached to a cart axle and dragging a cart filled
with ten men using a rope clenched between his teeth. Butty was also an entrepreneur and a great publicist, and he persuaded
Muhammad Ali to go to Dublin to fight his sparring partner, Alvin ‘Blue’ Lewis in July 1972.
Closer to home, he persuaded Mick Meaney a barman at the Admiral Nelson, to
break the world record for being buried alive. In April 1968 journalists joined
huge crowds to watch as Mick emerged after 61 days underground. There
are video clips of Butty on YouTube:
Butty’s club ran
until at least 1980 and so overlapped with the National Club.
Kilburn National Ballroom or the Kilburn National Club
The cinema became the
Kilburn National Club which ran from 15 Dec 1976 until 1999. It was owned by the Wembley
building firm of Patrick, John and Tom Carey. The Carey Brothers came from Tipperary. It was an ideal venue for bands and many
important groups played there.
In July
1991 an application to demolish the Grange was turned down by Camden Council as
earlier that year, English Heritage had protected the building by awarding it
Grade 2 listed status. When the owners wanted
to replace it with a new leisure complex in 1993, this was again refused.
The director Ian
Softly, used the National for his film about the Beatles called ‘Backbeat’
(1994). The venue was used to show the Beatles in the Star Club in Hamburg.
The Kilburn National
was closed in 1999 and the building remained empty for a few years.
Victory Christian Centre
The VCC, an
evangelical group moved into the building in July 2001. They had previously
been in 339 Finchley
Road but needed
larger premises as the congregation grew. The site in Finchley Road was the old International College building, which has since been demolished.
When Douglas Goodman
and his wife Erica, took over VCC in 1996 it had fewer than 100 members. They
started a new church in Wembley and increased the congregation to 3,000.
Footballer John Fashanu and his family were among the worshipers. Members
contributed 10% of their income and the annual income of the VCC was £3.5M.
Pastor Goodman, who preached in an American evangelical style, was a former bus
driver. He spent lavishly on Mercedes and Porsche cars and expensive holidays and had a large house in Collingtree Northants.
After a complaint, the
Charity Commission carried out an investigation and closed the church for
financial mismanagement in December 2002. In May 2004
Douglas Goodman appeared at the Old Bailey,
charged with indecently assaulting young women members of the church. He
was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
Universal
Church of the Kingdom
of God (UCKG).
The building remained empty until
a second evangelical group took over the site in 2003. The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God began in Rio in 1977 and spread out
across the world. Currently the old cinema is home to a UCKG Help Centre
and the Church also has a large centre in the old Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury
Park.
Some of the Bands who played at the Kilburn National
1977
Aug 24
Mungo Jerry
1978
July 24
The Bothy Band, a ‘BBC
Live in Concert’ recording
1980
August 7
Dexys Midnight
Runners
1981
April 28
Killing Joke
1982
Feb 18
Inspiral Carpets
May 25
New Order
August 16
The Alarm
September
The Undertones
1985
Dec 17
Echo and the
Bunnymen
1986
March 13
1986
November 18
Dec 4
March 13
Psychic TV
March 19
Sigue Sigue Spuknik
March 20
Redskins
May 8
Big Audio Dynamite
Oct 23
The Smiths, recorded
as the live album ‘Rank’
1986
November 18
Cocteau Twins
Nov 25
The Mission
The Pogues
 |
1986
Dec 16
Dec 16
Jesus and Mary Chain
1987
April 1
Simply Red
April 29
Spear of Destiny
recorded for the ‘BBC In Concert’
Sept 17
Stiff Little Fingers
1988 and 1990
The Wolfe Tones, a
very popular Irish band, regularly played at The National
1987
April 29
Spear of Destiny
May 3
Happy Mondays
May 13
The Alarm
Oct 6
That Petrol Emotion
Nov 12
Ghost Dance
1988
July 14
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Oct 2
The Alarm
14 December
The Sugarcubes, with Bjork
John McCooke, who later ran the 'Good Ship' in Kilburn High Road, said he was standing in the audience next to Sinead O'Connor
1989
Feb 20-22
The Waterboys
March 23
Sonic Youth
May 9
Pop Will Eat Itself
May 18
Killing Joke
June 28
Throwing Muses
June 29
Tin Machine, formed
in 1988 and fronted by David Bowie
1989
July 5
The Pixies
Oct 3
The The
Dec 20
The Jesus and Mary Chain
Primal Scream
1990
Feb 20
The Mission
March 21
The Fall
March 26
The House of Love
June 30
Tackhead
September 19
Fugazi
October 24
Johnny Cash
1990
Nov 1 and Nov 20
The Wedding Present
Nov 7-8
The Charlatans
Nov 27
Snuff
1991
March 6
Ride
May 12 and August 15
Snuff
June 5
The Shamen
Oct 3
Morrissey
Oct 4
The Orb
Oct 24
Blur
Nov 1
James Taylor Quartet
Nov 7
Carter and the
Unstoppable Sex Machine
Dec 5
Kurt Cobain and
Nirvana
Dec 28
Ned’s Atomic Dustbin
1992
May 3
The Cure
1992
May 12
Kurt Cobain and
Nirvana
Sept 9
The Young Gods
Oct 26
The Happy Mondays
Dec 11
Manic Street
Preachers
1992
Dec 13
Hawkwind
1993
April 5
Lemonheads
1996
March 7
The Lightning Seeds
May 16
Super Furry Animals
July 10
Dodgy
Sept 12
Boo Radleys
Oct 9
Kula Shaker
Oct 11
Suede
Nov 20
Broadcast
Dec 10
Beck
1997
March 2
Beck
April 26
Johnny Cash
April 25
Mansun
Oct 24
Bush
Nov 28
Black Grape
Dec 18
Paul Weller
The National Club closed
in the Spring of 1999.
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