March 1969: Led Zeppelin play The Bluesville '69 Club at The Hornsey Wood Tavern

I used to drink in this pub opposite Finsbury Park on Seven Sisters Road all through the late 90s and early 00s. We had lock-ins that ran until the early hours of the morning. We threw parties in the upstairs rooms. The pub then was run by Jack who never closed the bar while someone needed a drink.

Happy times!  We were sad to see it go in 2007. It's a housing block now. So it goes.

Obviously though it had a lot more history than we knew as this advert from 1969 shows. It seems that back then a club night hosted not just legends Led Zeppelin but also Jethro Tull, Family and Ten Years After to name but a few. 

Here's a quote from the closed pubs website The Lost Pubs Project remembering those days:

I saw quite a few bands at The Hornsey wood Tavern. Jethro Tull, Family, Ten Years After, Rory Gallagher Led Zeppelin. Apart from Led Zeppelin, there was always space to move around and often we`d stand right in front of the band. I must have seen these bands at least twice each. Great pub with amazing music. What a great pub landlord to have sorted that out so early on. Merih Tuman (May 2014)

The club night appears to have begun there around October 1968 (it moved from the larger venue of Manor House, picture below) and featured The Nice and Fleetwood Mac, who seemed to play regularly at the Bluesville Club, in the first weeks. According to the Led Zep database, they only played this venue once 50 years ago this month.

The venue was a function room at the back of the pub and was so small that the stage was only just big enough for John Bonham's drums, the rest of the group having to stand on the floor at the same level as the crowd.

London Music Map on Facebook

I would give my right arm now for a time machine to go back and see most of these bands (I was alas a wee babe in arms when these bands were playing gigs in pubs). That function room where the band played toe to toe with the audience became a pool hall, but there was a room upstairs as well where we threw our parties and sometimes joined in the ones thrown by the Colombian football club who played in the park.

Anyone remember going to club nights here in the late 60s and who they saw?

Old pics of The Hornsey Wood Tavern in Finsbury Park and as I remember it (above)