I’m very sad indeed to note the forthcoming closure of the Catford Constitutional Club. Frankly it’s hard not to like a place set up and managed by a roll-up smoking rabid socialist from Huddersfield in an old ruined Conservative club. Shabby chic, it wasn’t quite, because shabby doesn’t quite do it justice. It was utterly fucked, but fucked in a different way than the rest of Catford. Sadly it was so fucked that it turned out to be a death trap, hence the closure. But for a while, we had our very own Budapest-style ruin pub.
We moved to Catford because of its precursor, The Catford Bridge Tavern, (now rather antiseptic but with a ridiculously hot manager). There’s more here now, but it was certainly the trailblazer, and the CCC never felt like it was trying quite so hard to be cool as the Ninth Life. Ninth life is a great venue, and a community hub, with a bar. But the CCC managed to be a pub first and foremost - and yet all of those things too. We’ll miss this place. Godspeed ye.
A wild and crazy night at the CCC…. RIP.