Nightclub

The Sweatbox

Bestholme × Popplewick

A brick factory that stopped making anything a long time ago, and found a second use for its floor. The pilastered bays and segmental-arched mill windows are still there; most of the windows are bricked up, the sawtooth roof is blacked out, and what was the machine hall is now twenty metres by thirty-two of double-height room with a gallery running round three sides of it.

The doors open at seven in the evening and shut at four in the morning. Christie dances to whatever the club station is playing, and the club station has its own fourteen records - among them Foil on the Windows and Chish & Fips at 3 AM.

On the nights she is not dancing, Christie is an A&E nurse, and on the nights she is, she will talk to you if she fancies it. Her opening line is usually about the pillar you have been holding up. She is warm, dry and straight to the point, and she is not in the market for being pestered: turn up every night and crowd her, and you will get exactly the answer you deserve.

Out the back, behind the DJ booth, there is a covered terrace with three infrared heaters glowing red under the canopy, because you have not been allowed to smoke indoors since 2007. It is where the real conversations happen.

It is a hundred and eighty-three metres from Radworth Road, which is close enough to walk home from and far enough that the terraces do not have to listen to it.

• Open 19:00 - 04:00
• Gallery at 4.2 m
• Fourteen tracks on the club station
• Covered smoking terrace