Council booting Brixton Fencing Club from its home in local bowling green

A fencing club where Olympic gold medallists have trained is under threat of closure after a council booted it out of its South London home. Brixton Fencing Club has practised in the bowling green of Brixton Recreation Centre for 15 years, but it has now been told to leave by Lambeth Council. 

Lambeth says it needs the club to vacate the space by the end of March next year so that it can turn it into an education area for kids. But members fear they'll struggle to find an alternative suitable place to practise and want the council to reconsider its decision to make them homeless.

Harry Peck, Brixton Fencing Club's treasurer, said the thought of having to close was "devastating." Mr Peck, 26, whose dad was one of the founding members of the club back in 2003, said: "It will be terrible if we have to close. It's devastating to be honest. We have people training for competitions next year who are relying on us being open.

"We've had medals at European Championships, World Cups and Commonwealth Games. We even host two Olympic pentathletes, Joe Choong and Kate French, who both won gold at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics." 

Members of Brixton Fencing Club practising at Brixton Recreation Centre. CREDIT: Brixton Fencing Club

Jackie Yap, who has fenced at the club with her two children for around five years, said Brixton was one of few fencing clubs which was affordable for poorer families. Ms Yap said: "We have a free session that state school children can turn up. It was meant to just be for kids from Brixton, but we're not going to turn kids away, wherever they're from, if they make the trouble to come here. 

"We have a storage room full of donated equipment from the community. You can just turn up here and find something that fits you. Fencing requires so much equipment and it can be really expensive if you've got to buy it. But like this people can come and try it out and see if they like it first, without having to spend loads." 

Ms Yap added that it would be tricky to find a new venue as well-connected to accommodate its 150 plus regular attendees as the club's current home in the centre of Brixton. The club has use of the bowling green, a room to store donated equipment and an adjoining small cubbyhole which is used as a workshop to fix swords and other equipment. 

Members were initially told on November 21 that they would have to leave the recreation centre by the New Year. But they were given an extension after meeting with officials from Greenwich Leisure Limited [GLL], who manage the centre on behalf of Lambeth Council. The club said GLL had been "super helpful."

Lambeth is taking over management of Brixton Recreation Centre from GLL in Spring next year. The club asked local Labour councillor Donatus Anyanwu, who is also in charge of leisure at Lambeth, for an appointment at his Monday 6pm-7pm Brixton surgery to discuss the issue on December 5. 

Cllr Anyanwu told them he wasn't holding his surgery because he was travelling abroad but said he had asked his team to raise the issue with council officers, in an email seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service. Cllr Anyanwu appeared at a Lambeth Council cabinet meeting in Brixton on the same evening between 5pm and 7pm. 

A Lambeth Council press release from March described the area where Brixton Fencing Club trains as "an unused storage space in the basement and ground floor of Brixton Rec." The release went on to explain how the council wished to convert the area into "workspace with a new entrance and windows onto Beehive Place, activating this street and supporting employment, training and education activity."

 Lambeth Council was contacted but failed to respond before the publication of this article.