Beaufort Market was an indoor market, notable for its punk stalls, located just off the King’s Road in Chelsea, and just a short walk from Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s shop SEX. On the corner was the Roebuck pub where punks used to meet and drink and which put on gigs for a while.
Originally an antique market, like Antiquarius further down the King’s Road, it had gradually became clothing, records stalls and other types of retail. It closed in 1979.
Punk outside Beaufort Market 1977? – Picture credit – Alex Humphries
Interesting contrasting descriptions of the place from Sounds and NME music papers from 1979
For over three years Beaufort Market, has been London’s central trading post for cheap(ish) imaginatively designed punk fashion and fripperies, and became widely accepted as a spiritual Mecca for the capital’s Blank Generation. NME 7.4.1979
… the last bastion of the punks was Beaufort Market, a few stalls selling overpriced tack and tat squeezed into a crumbling building at the Seditionaries chic end of the Kings Road. Sounds7.4.79
Markets are ideal for young entrepreneurs offering a place to sell without the vast overheads of a shop and by 1976, as punk was starting to go overground, there were a number of soon to be punk faces running a stall.
Jon Savage in his history of punk Englan’s Dreaming has a short piece
Just before Seditionaries on the Sloane Square side, Beaufort Market had shed its antiques trade to become a rabbit-warren of tiny stalls. Upstairs there was Nigel Pennick’s Smutz, with its rips, chains and crudity a faded copy of BOY, while downstairs were Caroline Walker, selling fifties suits, Dave Fortune from Robot selling winkle-pickers and a bizarre stall run by a teenage girl, sporting op-art clothes and prominent teeth braces, with the name of Poly Styrene.
Above some of Poly’s designs
‘Take a cheap plastic bag,’ she says, ‘stick a lot of plastic flowers on it and things that nobody would be bothered to buy, then all of a sudden they become very very trendy and people want them. | had little lattice plastic bags and see-through Mary Quant shoes from the sixties: I used to buy up old stock, Anything different. Some of the things were vile but they were so vile they were cute. That was the whole thing:it was meant to be an extreme version of tack.
‘I just wanted to do something that was fun. | wasn’t planning on doing a huge big business out of it. Because in those days you were a teenager and it was more the fact you were doing something. | did the shop until the music started taking off: it was a great wardrobe for the music. We would walk into the shop and put something on and have my photograph taken and I’d be in the newspaper the next day and then be on stage.’
One was a half-Somali girl called Marion Elliott. She had released a lilting reggae single called Silly Billy in 1976 but catching first the Sex Pistols, and then The Clash, sparked the urge to do something different.
Right Marion (Poly) pictured outside Beaufort Market 1977 – Photo credit Falcon Stuart
“It was a life-changing … Afterwards, further inspired by visits to the Brixton shop Pollocks, which specialised in paint-splattered clothes, she started a stall in Beaufort Market, a punk enclave on London’s Kings Road, selling – as she described it – “Sixties tat”. Poly Styrene: Singer who blazed a trail for punk’s feminist revolutionaries
Her stall was called Poly Styrene and was located in Beaufort Market in the Kings Road in Chelsea. It was indeed the name of the fashion label that she used for her home spun autographed couture, that would give her the art-i-ficial pseudonym and punky-trade-marks that she would later adopt as front-woman of X-ray Spex. http://www.x-rayspex.com/biography/biography1.html
Poly made her own clothes in the true punk DIY way. She made kitsch clothes using plastic, pegs, slogans, day-glo, feathers, Oxfam clothing, she recycled. Zillah
Marion would become Poly Styrene and with her partner/manager Falcon Stuart form the legendary X Ray Spex
There was ROBOT shoes founded in 1977 by Michael McManus and Dave Fortune, They had originally took a stall with Nigel Brickell but when he went punk they went it alone. They became the LONDON exclusive George Cox dealer (ted’s brothel creeper shoes) under their own brand ROBOT,
Left Mick & Dave, middle & right, outside their Beaufort Market shop 1976/77. Photo Alex Buckingham. Note Adam Ant in the foreground with the legendary ‘fuck’ carved in his back by Jordan!
Another stall holder was Ollie Wisdom aka who would form the band Smak and whose first gig would be at the Roxy Club and end up on the live album from the club that made the top 20 but by then called The Unwanted.
Ollie Wisdom No.. the Unwanted was our first band and we put it together very quickly. I had a clothing stall in a place called Beaufort Market in the Kings Road selling punk clothes and we decided to do a band. Punk 77 Interview
Also there was Caroline Walker who made clothes for PIL among others before moving to Kensington Market when Beaufort shut.
Another was called Pervettes, which was mentioned in Women’s Own (Britain’s top selling weekly for women – according to itself) in October 1977 in a surprisingly positive feature called ‘Punks & Mothers.’
Pervettes is one which has stocked punk rock fashion for a year. Polly, the shop assistant says: “Believe it or not, most of the clothes are made by little old ladies. They’re always asking things like, ‘Who do you sell them to dear, Selfridges?’, and they’re often shocked by the transparent tops and rubber trousers.”
The most established and longest-running punk shop there was Smutz run by Nigel Brickell (see picture below – Nigel on left and Jock McDonald on right. A still from a Captain Trip film). He sold a number of affordable self-made designs augmented by the popular cire t-shirts and studded belts and wristbands from London Leatherman. The outlet and Nigel was featured a number of times in national newspapers in articles on punk and two books from the time; Punk by Virginia Boston and In The Gutter By Val Hennessey. His stall ran from 1976 to when Beaufort Market was shut down.
Smutz was more egalitarian and Nigel more gregarious so while there you would likely see members of bands like 999 or The Lurkers hanging out.
A visit to the Kings Road meant trips to BOY, Seditionaries and Beaufort Market was essential. It also meant potential violence but also to influence, inspire and energise.
Anita Corbin Punk threw everything up in the air and allowed the youth to create it’s own way of being”, remembers Anita…“When I went to the King’s Road to Beaufort Street market, it was all about us. As a generation it really felt as if we were creating something new. And punk has been the catalyst for so many artists since then because with punk, anything goes. 1st Women
WayneHemingway (Red Or Dead) Punk helped me become creative by learning how to put outfits together using second-hand clothing and accessories (I learned to use a sewing machine to sew a bondage strap onto trousers).
Punk got me around too… and punk opened my eyes to what a great city London is. Trips down to Beaufort Market gave me the confidence to move to London 3 years after punk broke in 1976.
Punk introduced me to Kensington Market where 4 years later Red or Dead got its first big break. Hemingway Design
Paul Rochford They were very exciting times. The Pistols et al provided an outlet for youth. Imagine the contrast between the droll Rubettes, and the unbridled anger of Anarchy in the UK. The excitement of the Kings Road on a Saturday afternoon: Acme Attractions (BOY), and SEX. Hanging out outside the Roebuck, or the Water Rat. Listening to ‘tunes’ at Beaufort market. Running for cover when the ‘Teds’ came looking for trouble, or the Chelsea supporters happened to call. Paul Rochford, Friend of Gideon Sams author of The Punk
Another stallholder was the legendary punk wheeler-dealer and loveable (or hateable to some as he had a tendency to violence) rogue Jock McDonald who with his brothers was mates with John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) brothers and John himself.
Jock had got involved with gay gangster Kevin St John in the Roxy Club and ran his own night featuring bands like Muvvers Pride where entry was a slice of bread (Mothers Pride – geddit???)
He also tried to run the ill-fated much publicised Rainbow gigs where he attempted to put on punk bands upstairs (Adam & the Ants) at The venue while below say Thin Lizzy was rocking out and he’s put on the first Public Image Gigs at the Rainbow.
In 1979 he’d taken a stall in Beaufort Market before Roxy Club history repeated itself and the lease was up.
While you may question his character or his band the Bollock Brothers you can’t argue with his ability to mobilise people and get publicity which was pretty impressive!
It was Jock that organised the petition and protest against the closure of the Roxy Club, the squatting of the venue and the storming of Capital Radio.
He would be called into action again when it was announced Beaufort Market was to close. This time he outdid himself by saying The Clash were going to play on the rooftop.
The day brought hordes of punks to the streets and police and arrests and was featured in the papers and Sounds and the NME. The Clash didn’t play but Strummer did tun up and mingle in the crowd.
Jock McDonald: my little stall on London’s Kings Road of where I brought The Clash to play on the roof, and I filled the kings road with Punks, the first time on London’s streets that the SPG (Special Patrol Group) real bastards were used. Bollock Brothers Website
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