The UK’s oldest weightlifting gym is under threat. Can it weather gentrification?

There are not many places in London’s East End that have survived the sweeping gentrification of recent decades, but Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club (BGWLC) remains refreshingly unmodernised since it opened around 100 years ago. 

When I walked through the doors on a hot summer’s night in 2018, I had not been back in almost 40 years, yet I was instantly transported back to my childhood. In the early ​’80s, when my dad was at the start of an international powerlifting career that would span nearly 40 years and bring him four world titles, he used to train at Bethnal Green several times a week. Now entering its walls again seven years later, in 2025, that feeling remains.

Sometimes, at the weekend, we’d travel up from our home in Essex to the area where both my parents’ families originally hailed from. Part of the generation of East Enders who were bombed out in the blitz, my mum would take my brother and me to the market on Bethnal Green Road while my dad trained. Afterwards, we might get pie and mash from Kelly’s or head to the nearby Roman Road to have a gander at the shops and stalls that lined its length.

Now, many of the traditional East End caffs and London boozers have gone, replaced by vape shops or hipster coffee bars. But among a rapidly changing London landscape, Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club (BGWLC) is like a time capsule; a living monument to strength sport and the unique role that East End institutions played in making it what it is today.

• Read next: Revisiting London’s East End During the ​’70s and ​’80s

In the aftermath of the First World War, the government invested in a plethora of activities designed to rehabilitate men returning from the brutality of combat, often to parts of London mired in poverty, where opportunities were limited and health and life expectancy were severely impacted by urban deprivation. In a time before Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was called by its name, art classes, boxing sessions and choirs were set up. Gyms were established alongside public baths to encourage physical fitness and improve hygiene, and woodworking classes offered therapeutic activities.

In the East End, a generation of men hardened by work on the docks and the horrors of war were in dire need of such facilities – and the Bethnal Green Institute offered all of these things. The first recorded gymnasium and physical fitness classes date back to 1922. In 1927, the Institute moved to Turin St school, which had closed a few years earlier, and by 1948, gym classes had grown sufficiently that the club moved into the separate infant school building – where it still remains today.

The club officially dates itself to 1926 – despite classes having started at least four years earlier – and its earliest surviving photograph. The black-and-white portrait of club members flexing their muscles and posing in trunks still hangs proudly on the wall of the gym today. In fact, nearly every inch of the peeling, white-washed walls of the Victorian building are smothered in certificates and photographs that catalogue past glories and current victories, as well as providing a fascinating glimpse into the early history of both weightlifting and powerlifting in the UK – both of which trace their roots back to BGWLC. 

There’s a poster from the Great Open Air Physical Culture Display in 1931. A piece from the Hackney Gazette a year later celebrating four new records set by members. Photos of men in posing shorts from 1952. Certificates, trophies and more photographs that span the many decades the club has been in operation and the champions that have trained there.

• Read next: In a city of rapid gentrification, one south London estate stands firm

Among their number are several photos of my own father and the lifters that I grew up with: my dad and another heavyweight powerlifter, Steve Zetolofsky, holding a bar from which three lightweight lifters hang. Multiple world champion Eddie Pengelly with his long, blonde Viking hair and handlebar moustache, bar bent with weight as it curves above his head. Others of my dad’s friends and contemporaries and rivals – including my brother’s godfather, George – hanging there on the wall like black and white ghosts staring back at me from my past. 

These were halcyon days for Bethnal Green, when most of the Great British team trained at the club. But this is no mausoleum to past sporting glories: the club has an active – and growing – membership that still spans ages, nationalities, gender and class. It boasts more national and international champions across both disciplines than any other gym in the UK.

Amazingly, BWGLC is that rare place which fosters excellence, while also encouraging all ages and abilities. Martin Bass, who has been coaching at the club since 1977 (the year that I was born, on the way back from my dad’s first national championships, but that’s a different story), is also head coach of the British Masters Powerlifting team. But despite the high calibre of champions the gym has produced – many of whom Martin has personally trained – he is just as passionate about making strength sport accessible for local people. 

Both Martin and Micky Roach, the club’s weightlifting coach, are old-school Londoners who epitomise all that is best about the cheeky cockney stereotype. Friendly, welcoming and down-to-earth, they have time for everyone who walks through the doors of their gym, whether elite athlete or first timer.

• Read next: A sexually charged look at masculinity in sport

One night when I visit, the youngest member, Georgia, is training hard. At just eight years old, she’s working with three others who are all being coached by Micky. Eloise is 14, Christina has just turned 30 and Mica is 60. ​“I worried I was too old,” says Mica, who can otherwise be found running a market stall nearby. ​“But when I came in, everyone was so welcoming, just so encouraging. They really believed in me, and I love it here.”

Mica is a proper local, but teenager Eloise travels from north London twice a week ​“because there isn’t anywhere like this where I live”. She saw a weightlifting demonstration on holiday, she says, and instantly knew she wanted to give it a go. Cristina, originally from Italy, came to London to study for a PhD and works at a tech firm nearby. Her ex-boyfriend introduced her to strength sports, and she came to Bethnal Green after looking around for a gym with ​“a real sense of community”. 

“There are not many places like this left,” she tells me. ​“There’s a genuine diversity here that’s really special. It’s not manufactured, it’s just what it is. Men and women, all ages and shapes and sizes. It’s a really special place.”

At the other end of the room, Josh is training hard. He is originally from Canada but has called London home for the past decade. He lives in Farringdon and works in the City but has been coming to Bethnal Green for more than two years. He’s tried the shiny, corporate gyms near his home and place of work but says ​“the people suck and the constant EDM music was driving me nuts”. Catherine, 32, agrees. ​“I am not interested in training in a commercial gym,” she tells me. ​“They’re awful places, full of teenagers on their phones.” 

• Read next: In London, rollerskating’s revival rumbles with the city’s soundsystem culture

At Bethnal Green, there isn’t a cross trainer or a cardio machine in sight. Everywhere, squat stands, benches and free weights fight for space. Old equipment – including a rare barbell from the 1930s that hangs suspended from the ceiling – form an irreplaceable physical archive of the evolution of strength sport. 

There’s no protein shake machine, chiller cabinet selling snacks or even a proper reception area. Instead, an old school table sits just inside the door, a book on top for signing in and out and an honesty box for your fees. No music plays. The only sounds are the heavy clang of weights slamming into one another as bars are loaded, and the dull thud of them dropping onto thick, rubber mats. And the sound of lifters – young and old, male and female, elite and beginner – chatting, encouraging one another and having fun.

Josh and his training buddies laugh about the few basic nods to modernity that the Bethnal Green club does boast: double glazed windows (a relatively recent upgrade), heating and electricity, a toilet and shower in each of the changing rooms (originally the infant school’s boys and girls toilets, also largely unchanged since my childhood). It might be rough around the edges, but therein lies the charm of the place, according to the club’s loyal regulars.

• Read next: Warm, tender photos of London’s amateur boxing scene

BGWLC is the polar opposite of the soulless gym chains that now dominate the UK’s burgeoning fitness sector. Whereas gyms used to be largely owed and run by local councils, now franchises such as Fitness First, Virgin and Nuffield Health dominate. Memberships are eye-wateringly expensive, meaning clubs like Bethnal Green are even more vital in ensuring access to sport for all. And the love and loyalty felt by both members and those – like Micky and Martin – who have been involved in running the club for decades, create a unique atmosphere that is of intangible value in today’s isolated and individualistic world.

In 1986, control of Bethnal Green Institute passed to Tower Hamlets council and was absorbed into its adult education provision – with weightlifting classes still offered as part of that. In 2012, the main school site was repurposed as a training and events centre. When weight training classes were axed from the borough’s adult education offering, club members formed a not-for-profit community group and took over the current building under a gentleman’s agreement. They have been attempting to formalise a lease with the council for the past 15 years. 

Then, last summer, Tower Hamlets council suddenly served notice, with no consultation and no prior communication. The site has apparently now been earmarked for (yet another) high-density residential development. It currently contains no provision to retain the existing gym building, making its demolition the most likely outcome. If this happens, it will be a loss of huge cultural and historical significance – although most in the East End would say that they are used to such bereavements. Just five minutes up the road, a crowdfunding campaign has been launched to save Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, opened in 1887 and a stalwart of London’s LGBTQ+ scene. It has also been earmarked for sale by Tower Hamlets council.

• Read next: The grit and glory of British toe wrestling

Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club may yet find a new home. Yet the history, worn into wooden weightlifting platforms and etched into chalk-covered walls, can never be replaced or entirely recreated. As Dr Broderick Chow, author of Muscle Works: Performance and Physical Culture puts it: ​“the club’s unbroken lineage of training practices, passed down through generations of lifters, represents an irreplaceable repository of embodied knowledge.” In other words, it’s not just the people that make this place special; it is something about the space itself, too, and the unique history it contains within its crumbling, white-washed walls.

In the never-ending quest to squeeze yet more profit out of every square inch of our capital’s real estate, this beautifully authentic piece of history – which is also a vital and vibrant community asset – risks being lost forever. 

Meanwhile, Martin, Mickey, Josh, Mica and many others will continue to campaign to save Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club, an institution that has profoundly shaped British strength sports for nearly a century. I’m praying that it will still be standing in another 100 years.

Sign the petition to save Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club here.

Emma Fowle is a journalist and author. Her memoir, All the Times You Were Not There (SPCK) about life with an elite athlete and the aftermath of drug addiction, comes out February 2026. Follow her on Instagram.

Buy your copy of Huck 82 here.

Enjoyed this article? Follow Huck on Instagram and sign up to our newsletter for more from the cutting edge of sport, music and counterculture.

Support stories like this by becoming a member of Club Huck.