Fabric: the club that got shut down and got the country to fight for it back
Voted the best club in the world twice over, then closed by the council that licensed it - and reopened after the loudest campaign British clubbing has run for itself.
Opening, and the World Number 1 years
Fabric opened on 29 October 1999 on Charterhouse Street, opposite Smithfield Market, founded by Keith Reilly and Cameron Leslie. It became one of the most decorated clubs in the world by the numbers that get counted in dance music: DJ Magazine's Top 100 Clubs poll placed it at World Number 1 in both 2007 and 2008.
The 2016 closure
In September 2016, Islington Council revoked Fabric's licence and shut the club down, after two drug-related deaths at the venue. The council's review found what it called a culture of drug use that staff were incapable of controlling - a finding that ended, on paper, one of the world's best-regarded clubs.
Reopening under new terms
What followed was a public campaign, backed by London's Mayor, to get the club back open rather than let the closure stand. Fabric struck a deal with Islington Council on stricter terms - ID scanning on the door, increased CCTV, and lifetime bans for anyone caught with drugs - and reopened in January 2017 with a celebratory weekend of club nights, its first since the licence had been pulled four months earlier.
Fabric losing a licence and winning it back is not the normal shape of a club's story in this country - most that get closed this way stay closed. It is one of the clearest examples anywhere of a licensing authority and a club finding real terms to reopen on, rather than the closure being final.