The Roundhouse
The Roundhouse in London is a historic performance venue on Chalk Farm Road, constructed in 1846 as a railway engine shed before evolving into an influential counterculture arts space. Designed by Robert Dockray and Robert Stephenson, its 160-foot domed roof rests on 24 cast-iron Doric columns. After functioning as a gin warehouse, it hosted landmark shows by Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix before reopening in 2006.
London · from the walk “Concrete, Catacombs & Control” · Generated
The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road, London NW1 8EH
- Built in 1846, The Roundhouse features a domed roof rising 67 feet supported by 24 cast-iron Doric columns.
- Merchants W and A Gilbey used The Roundhouse as a bonded spirit warehouse for 50 years starting in 1871.
- Soft Machine and Pink Floyd performed at The Roundhouse launch party for the International Times on October 15, 1966.
- Spiral Tribe hosted a week-long rave at The Roundhouse using power stolen from the railway on New Year's Eve 1991.
Why was The Roundhouse in London originally built in 1846?
Look up at this building. A hundred and sixty feet of iron and brick, squatting on Chalk Farm Road like a bunker from a world that never quite arrived... or maybe one that already ended.
This is the Round-house, built as a turntable engine shed for the London and Birmingham Railway, designed by Robert Dock-ray and Robert Steph-enson. The year was eighteen forty-six. The Victorians weren't just building a train depot. They were building a Temple to progress... a cathedral for the iron horse.
A hundred and sixty feet in diameter, its roof rising to a domed apex sixty-seven feet high, supported on twenty-four cast-iron Doric columns. Inside, it could hold twenty-three engines, one between each pair of columns, with a great turntable in the centre onto which the engines were run to be turned into their berths.
And here's the first act of this building's very dystopian story. Within Ten years, locomotives became too long for the building to accommodate. Progress devoured its own monument. The machines Outgrew their cage... and the Roundhouse was abandoned by the future it was built to serve.
Then came the gin. In eighteen seventy-one, the wine and gin merchants W and A Gil-bey moved in, using it as a bonded warehouse. For Fifty years, this iron cathedral held nothing but barrels of spirits in the dark. Then even Gilbey's left, and the building fell into disuse just before World War Two.
But the Roundhouse was waiting. In nineteen sixty-six, something extraordinary happened inside these walls. On the fifteenth of October, the opening concert was the All Night Rave, in which Soft Machine and Pink Floyd appeared at the launch of the underground newspaper International Times. That newspaper challenged mainstream media and received a strained relationship with authorities, its offices becoming the destination of frequent raids by police.
Think about that. A derelict train shed... becomes ground zero for London's counterculture. Hendrix played here. The Doors played here. Peter Brook directed experimental theatre inside these walls.
But the most dystopian chapter? New Year's Eve, nineteen ninety-one. Spiral Tribe held a rave at the then-derelict Roundhouse, which lasted for a Week. At four A.M. the generator blew up. There was no power. It could have been the end... but someone managed to get the power running from the railway itself. That alternative power source wasn't discovered for a further two weeks. An abandoned monument... hijacked... running on stolen electricity... pounding with repetitive beats into the void.
And the government's response? The Criminal Justice Act of nineteen ninety-four defined illegal gatherings as twenty or more people where music includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats. They literally Outlawed a type of rhythm. If that isn't dystopia written into law, I don't know what is.
Now look up at the rooftop. When the Roundhouse reopened in two thousand six, a new figure appeared on the roof... Antony Gorm-ley's dark sculpture entitled "You," standing straight and thin, watching over Camden. Its design gives the impression of being squeezed into a tight urban surrounding... perhaps a comment on London life.
A solitary iron figure... standing on an iron building... gazing over a city that has reinvented this place more times than it can remember. Engine shed. Gin warehouse. Psychedelic temple. Illegal rave. Arts venue. Every purpose assigned to it has collapsed... and it just keeps standing here. Outliving everything.