Newton Dunbar, who ran the Four Aces Club on Dalston Lane for three decades, is being honoured with a commemorative plaque from Hackney Council. It is due to be fixed this week to Collins Tower, facing the site of the club, which was knocked down in 2007.
The council and Hackney Archives scheduled the unveiling for Saturday 24 October at the archives, during Black History Month. Hackney Citizen reported that the plaque would then go up on Collins Tower the following week.
“It is only fitting that we are celebrating Newton Dunbar’s influence on Black music and culture with a plaque unveiling on 24 October,” a Hackney Council spokesperson told The Voice.
The club
Dunbar, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica, opened the Four Aces at 12 Dalston Lane in 1967 and named it after a brand of Jamaican cigarettes, according to The Voice. It became one of the first venues in London to play Black Caribbean music.
Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff, Ann Peebles and Ben E. King all played there, Hackney Citizen reported. The Voice says Dunbar booked Dekker six weeks before “Israelites” reached number one in 1969.
Police raids were frequent. In 1988, 60 armed officers forced their way in; 14 people were arrested and seven charged, Dunbar among them. Hackney Citizen reported that he was taken to court 14 times by the council and the police and never convicted.
From 1990 the building hosted Labrynth, Joe Wieczorek’s rave nights, which brought acid house, hardcore and jungle to Dalston Lane. The council made a compulsory purchase order in 1998, and the club and the old Dalston Theatre beside it were demolished in 2007 despite a campaign to save them.
A name on a tower
The site is now Dalston Square. One of its towers was named Dunbar Tower; Dunbar said in a 2014 interview with Vice that he had not been consulted. He kept DJing as DJ Newton Ace and died in 2024.
His daughter, Natalie Dunbar, worked with the council and the archives for about a year to get the plaque agreed. “My dad waited many years for this recognition, and it was the last thing he asked me to see through before he died,” she told The Voice.
Diane Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said: “It was a hub for Black people of a certain generation. This was a place to meet your friends, party and have fun.”
Winstan Whitter, who made the 2008 documentary Legacy in the Dust about the club and campaigned to save the building, welcomed the plaque but told Hackney Citizen the council should do more on the site. “They celebrate stuff when it’s gone,” he said.
The essentials
- What: Hackney Council plaque to Newton Dunbar and the Four Aces Club
- Where: Collins Tower, facing Dalston Lane, near the former club at 12 Dalston Lane, London E8
- Unveiling: scheduled for Saturday 24 October 2026 at Hackney Archives
- Club years: 1967 to the late 1990s; demolished 2007