Feeling at Home

Dan Gillespie-Sells, front man of The Feeling, shows Attitude around his East London pad – a converted pub, which serves as his home, and his recording studio.

WORDS: BEN KELLY

PHOTOGRAPHY:FRANCISCOGOMEZDEVILLABOA

Dan Gillespie-Sells’ home is the kind of spacious living quarters-cum-studio you might expect a musician to have in the suburbs or the countryside, except it’s smack bang in the middle of Hackney, East London.

Functioning as a pub since the 19th century (until it lost its license in 2000), the building retains the bottle green and beige tiling around its exterior – commonplace for traditional cockney boozers.

“It was built in 1880, as part of what is now a conservation area,” Dan explains. “The whole row of houses to the side of it all got taken out by a bomb during the Second World War. So now we have two houses next door that replicate the old style, and then a block of 1960s flats.”

What Dan didn’t know was that the building has a gay history that extends well before he moved in. “When my uncle came to look at this place, he realised he used to drink here in the 80s, when it was a gay pub, The Royal Oak. And I had no idea! All I knew was that it was a West Indian drinking place in the 1990s, where they had dominos competitions and stuff – this is what locals have told me – and it was a bit rough, particularly towards the end, before it lost its license. There were a lot of drugs being done here, and temporary landlords not looking after the place.”