This event will be hosted on Sunday, May 20, in the dance hall of the Polish Club at Hamilton House in Balham High Road, Tooting.
Davis said: “This is an atmospheric backdrop to a selection of handpicked traders selling reconditioned lighting, mid-century furniture, French educational posters and brocante, glass and ceramics and a great selection of 1950s and ‘60s vintage fashion and jewellery.”
‘Atmospheric’ also sums up the former use. As Davis added: “It was well known in the 1950s and ’60s as the 211 Club, a vice den run by an associate of the notorious Kray twins. The so-called ‘Lady Hamilton’s Ballroom’ – named after a likely apocryphal story that the house was originally bought for Lady Hamilton by Lord Nelson – was a boxing ring.
“A casino was run from an upstairs room where gangster Jack ‘the Hat’ McVitie was thrown out of the club for threatening a croupier with a knife just a few months before he was murdered by Reggie Kray.“
The 211 Club is long gone and Hamilton House is now home to the White Eagle Club, one of the largest Polish clubs in the country.
So Last Century holds fairs at three other south London venues: two in Beckenham, at Beckenham Place Mansion and Venue 28, and one at St Dunstan’s College in Catford.
