The Corkscrew

Hanna Barrington had escaped Nazi-controlled Europe as a young woman and remained a committed communist and political activist throughout her life. During the war she worked as a London bus conductor, where she was sacked for refusing to charge servicemen, and later drove RAF trucks using modified pedals because of her small stature. She later travelled with the Communist Party before returning to London and eventually meeting Patrick Barrington, a Guyanese artist, whom she married in 1967.
At the Corkscrew, Hanna served simple Viennese-style food (famously serving no desserts — “if you vont a f***ing cake, go to a coffee bar!”) with cats lounging on the bar and prices so low that customers often insisted on buying extra drinks. Her warmth and generosity were legendary, though she was also proudly blunt — including the often-retold moment when she threw out Sarah Ferguson for being too noisy, declaring she had no time for “riff-raff at either end of ze social scale.”
While not an explicitly LGBTQ+ venue, the Corkscrew was widely known as a place where queer people felt safe, visible and welcome at a time when many pubs and cafés were still hostile. After the bar closed, Hanna and Patrick also took in lodgers referred through Gay Switchboard, offering affordable housing to LGBTQ+ people who struggled to find safe accommodation.
The Corkscrew’s history shows how queer community was often sustained through hospitality, politics and everyday acts of care, rooted in ordinary neighbourhood streets and in the values of people like Hanna and Patrick Barrington.