Claiming to be the oldest boozer in Brighton, dating back to at least 1568, the site of the current East Street Tap was once known as The Greyhound.

‘Between coming out of the forces at twenty and say, twenty-two, there was a sort of in-between period where I wouldn’t accept the fact that I was gay. I was very young and very apprehensive about actually going into a gay bar. We thought how daring this would be. So one night, in the summer, we decided we would go into this gay bar, the Greyhound, opposite the cinema along East Street. We got to the Palace Pier and we walked on and we hadn’t got the courage to go in. We got practically to Rottingdean, we still hadn’t got the courage. But on the way back, we said, ‘We are going in!’ So we came back along the seafront, back to Pool Valley, we came up through that side street and we pushed open the door quickly and Steve and I fell in the door and to our horror, we found we were in the heterosexual bar and the gay bar was upstairs. So I lowered my voice and went, ‘Brown ale, please.’ Suddenly out of the corner of our eye, we saw all these people trooping upstairs and I can’t tell you how much courage it took to walk from that bar, to go up those stairs because what you were actually doing, in front of all those people was saying, ‘I’m one of them.’

And we went upstairs and, of course, when you went up there, being new to it, although you felt more at home, you felt ill at ease because you didn’t know the mores, what was going on there, how you did it. Did you just sit down and talk to anybody? Or did you ignore everybody? How did you meet other gays? I mean you found them in twos and threes. How did you break into that? We didn’t, we just sat there that night, enjoying it.’

Return up East Street and turn left onto Bartholomews. Continue past the Brighton Town Hall and Old Police Cell Museum, and onto Prince Albert Street until you come to the corner of Black Lion Street.