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Some young 'Witches types' early 1960s
Some young 'Witches types' early 1960s
L to R, Marilyn, behind her, Jenny Prince (with black hair), Jill, Maeve, Tony and Katy Leidner, with Mox the crazy harmonica player climbing the post.
The header picture shows Pete Davis and Marilyn standing in front of the Witch's Cauldron
(Thanks to Pete Davis and Kate Ruse for this and other pictures including the group photo above)
This site is about the Witches Cauldron coffee bar, Belsize Village, early 1960s -- Memories from those who were ther
It is dedicated to the memory of all the people who gathered talked, made friends and partied there!
The nearest tube station is Belsize Park. Tony Barnett's father, Dan Barnett, a commercial artist, had his studio behind one of those big semi-circular windows in the station building. Bernie Osgood's cousin opened a coffee bar in the ground floor of the house next door on Haverstock Hill called Club 01 around 1962.
What was special about the Witches Cauldron?
Lots of young people gathered to talk, share ideas, meet new pals, pull and go to parties, pubs, protests just as the 1960s were taking off.
No history has been written about those heady times, when thousands of teenagers mixed, had fun and started off the rest of their lives.
It was in Bohemian Hampstead, the stamping ground of immigrants, artists, actors, intellectuals, and where their children mingled in the cultural ferment of the years following World War 2 and the emerging swinging 60s.
It soon became more than a coffee bar and later offered live music!
The Witches Cauldron was a coffee bar in Belsize Village from 1959/60 to the mid 1960s when it became Conrad's Bistro. It was owned and run by Reg and Daphne Conrad. They deserve credit for not chasing us out when we made one coffee last for hours and hours.
By chance rather than design it became a magnet for North London youth.
It was a place where young people met, chatted, shared gossip and ideas and made plans to go off to pubs, parties, movies or each others' places
I spent many of my teenage years there - from 15 to getting on for 20 years - and made friends that have lasted a lifetime as well as memories of others that I have lost touch with
Swiss Cottage is also a short walk away. This is what it looked like in the early 1960s.
A modern picture of Belsize village showing the location of the Witch's Cauldron (the green double fronted premises with hanging flowers at the rear. Before its expansion the Witches was just single fronted)
THE MENU
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My memory is that Spaghetti Bolognese and Risotto Conrad were 2/6d each, as was the case in the other place in Belsize Park opened by the owners of the Witches Cauldron.
This is detailed in James Murphy, A Catholic Life, Matador Books, 2017, who helped set up both the Loft and then the Witch's Cauldron with Reg Conrad
Extract from 2nd page of Chapter 8
(Note 2s 6d is equivalent to 12.5p)
Extract from 3rd page of Chapter 8
A review of a book from CNJ starts with memories of the Witches Cauldron
Belsize Remembered: Memories of Belsize Park. Compiled by Ranee Barr and David S Percy, Aulis Publishing, 2017. Review by Dan Carrier.
IT was, says Mel Wright, a “likely cellar dive” for an early 1960s RnB club. Found in the basement of the Witch’s Cauldron in Belsize Lane, it had “arty posters and tables with candlelit wine bottles, also dreamy student girls looking like Jean Shrimpton, reading Penguin paperbacks and who I imagined lived in a nearby Belsize bedsit”.
The drummer’s memories of late nights in NW3 are part of a collection of stories from the neighbourhood collected in a new book, Belsize Remembered.
From grand 19th-century homes to mid-20th century blocks, from the delis run by German émigrés to beat clubs that gave young students somewhere to meet, Belsize Park’s diverse range of streets and houses has offered a home to an equally diverse range of people.
The social history of the neighbourhood has been drawn together by the anecdotes of people like Mel who have made it home – and it reads like a wonderful requiem for a London village in the 20th century.
Compiled by Ranee Barr, a poet and historian who has lived in Belsize Park for more than 40 years, and photographer, film-maker and graphic designer David Percy, who has lived in the area much of his life, the book started in 2012.
http://camdennewjournal.com/article/the-secret-life-of-belsize-park
This page is about sharing memories of our youth at the infamous coffee bar in Belsize Park in the early 1960s.
In the early to mid 20th century Hampstead was already known as a place for artists, intellectuals, actors and bohemians. After WW2 it became a settling ground for displaced artists and intellectuals both from abroad and from within the UK. There were many Jewish artists and intellectuals, but also Indian, European, Southern African and others settling in Hampstead including leftwing Americans fleeing from MacCarthyite persecution. 1960 was the perfect time for the second generation, children of the Hampstead incomers, to seek new identities given that their parents had, to a greater or lesser extent, lost their family connections and severed their ties with the past.
At the same time there was the growth of new youthful cultures, including the Beat Generation, the Angry Young Men, Rock and Roll, the Folk Scene, Traditional and Modern Jazz, political protest movements (CND: Ban the Bomb, etc), and new youth groups (Teddy Boys, Mods & Rockers). Teenagers also had more freedom, autonomy and spending power. All this was the background to the Witches Cauldron Coffee Bar, as a central focus of a certain type of youth culture in Hampstead.
The Witches Cauldron provided coffee and other non-alcoholic drinks, and a modest food menu including such dishes as spaghetti bolognaise (still an exotic dish in the UK in 1960). But most of all it offered a venue where young people could talk, discussing new ideas, and meet other young people throughout the day and evening. Later, around 1963-64, the Witches Cauldron opened up downstairs, the cellar, where one could play music like the Dave Clark 5's 'Glad All Over' and dance to it. It has been claimed that the Rolling Stones played live downstairs before they got famous.
Thousands of young people, and some not so young, passed through the Witches Cauldren to meet friends, to arrange to go on dates, go to weekend parties, participate in political activities and go on demonstrations. A huge range of characters were regulars at the Witches Cauldron, mostly pleasant young people eager to see and make new friends, and some more troubled and disreputable types. The problem was telling on from the other.
The Witches Cauldron was aptly named, it was a melting pot of all of the types of people listed above, as well the children of Hampstead bohemians, working class locals and immigrants, and various waifs and strays. It was a vibrant mix of young people intent on making connections, developing their knowledge and above all else, having fun.
Sometimes this fun went wrong. There were parties in Hampstead and the suburbs in which persons from the Witches Cauldron were invited (also known as the Hampstead Set). Typically teenage girls would invite us over for a party when their parents were away. Heavy drinking sometimes led to the party going out of control, with scores of uninvited guests invading and houses were ransacked and trashed. There were also thefts from some of the houses. There was widespread experimentation with drugs and a number of people died from overdoses or had their lives wrecked through heroin addiction. A surprising number of people beat and survived heroin addiction and went on to live constructive and fulfilling lives. However heavy drug use which first began around 1963 in this milieu was never more than a minority habit, and even some of those who tried it out, only dabbled without addiction.
Mostly going to the Witches was about friendship and fun and the majority of the young people who went there regularly went on to study, travel, work, and build constructive and rewarding careers and lives. Now we are all pensioners looking back on our misspent (or was it well-spent?) youth!
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