Last week we popped by Bishops Wine Bar to catch up with co-owner Angela Ferrara about the bar’s history and their upcoming ABBA night on Saturday 26 July, which celebrates the 10th birthday of Cosimo (the bar’s cat, of course).

In case you don’t know Bishops, it is a local institution and possibly both Croydon’s most central and most hidden bar. If you are looking for a truly quirky place to have a drink this is the place to go… With an address that is 1129 Whitgift Centre, the bar actually sits just outside the first floor exit of the shopping centre (the Allders end) in the adjacent car park building. Over to Angela to find out more.

Croydonist: First of all, Croydon native or Croydon convert, and what area do you call home?

Angela: Croydon native. I was born in Wimbledon so I suppose technically I’m a Womble, but I’ve lived all my life in Croydon. I grew up in South Croydon and now live in East Croydon, near the station, which is great as I do like to travel, mainly to sporting events around the country and, as we all know, the transport links from Croydon are excellent.

Croydonist: How long have you been running Bishops?

Angela: We’ve been here for 15 years.

Croydonist: Have you always worked in the hospitality industry? 

Angela: No, not at all, I’ve been a printer, a signwriter and I worked at the Home Office as their graphic designer. After that I was the creator and Editor of Wired Magazine (later Deep as we were forced to change the name by Wired in America), the Croydon free listings magazine that ran for over 10 years. Some of your readers may remember it. Unfortunately I had to close the magazine down for various reasons, which was a shame, but it was huge fun to do for all those years.

I came to be a landlady when me and my dad, Tony, took over Bishops 15 years ago.

Croydonist: Could you tell us a bit about Bishops’ history, and why it is so named?

Angela: Bishops was opened as a wine bar in 1982 by the original owners Ken and Pat. My mum was a regular there, as was I, generally on my lunch breaks from the Home Office. In fact you could find most of the staff of Lunar House in there most lunchtimes, along with half the Council and people from all the surrounding office-blocks which were, at that time, all full. When Ken wanted to retire he was looking to sell the business so my Dad bought it and here we are!

Before it was a wine bar, Bishops was actually the Croydon Information Centre, which is why all the cubby holes behind the bar are A4 sized for the various forms they used to have and why we have an entry ramp rather than steps. It’s named Bishops after Bishops Courtyard, which is where we are situated, just outside the Whitgift Centre, and that’s called Bishops Courtyard, we think, because the Whitgift Centre used to actually be the playing fields of Whitgift/Trinity Schools, who traditionally have connections with Croydon clergy. So we presume it was named for some reason connected to that. More details on that we don’t know I’m afraid.

Croydonist: Cosimo is the bar’s permanent resident. How did he come to live there?

Angela: Bit of a long story but when we first took over Bishops we had a bit of a problem with mice, so we decided to get a cat. A friend of mine brought in his two new kittens and we took one of those, who we named Tipsy (her brother, Ollie, went on to live at the Oval Tavern). Unfortunately as Tipsy got older it was clear she wasn’t massively happy at the bar, with all the people and the noise etc so I brought her home. She was a fussy eater so my late husband and I would dispose of Tipsy’s left-over food out of our ground floor flat’s window to feed a group of hedgehogs that would trundle past the window. After a while we started noticing a skinny stray cat who would come to eat the food. It took us about 6 months but eventually Wobbles, as we named her, would come into the flat and seemed to like us. But she and Tipsy did not get along so I took Wobbles to live at the bar, where she absolutely thrived and was loved by everyone there. She was also loved by another little stray cat who wandered to the bar one day, who we called Booboo. They had 5 kittens together and the smallest boy was Cosimo, who we kept to live at the bar with his mum. Sadly Wobbles passed away a few years ago so now it’s only Cosimo who owns the place! He’s an absolute superstar and is probably the most photographed cat in Croydon.

Croydonist: We hear you have an ABBA night coming up on 26 July – can you tell our readers more about it?

Angela: Indeed. It’s Cosimo’s 10th Birthday actually on 26th so we decided to celebrate by getting an ABBA tribute band as Cosimo loves ABBA! The band is called Abba Stars and they’re a really good fun 4-piece tribute act. The plan, if the weather is nice enough, is to host the band outside in the Courtyard, if not it’ll be inside the bar. Doors for the gig are at 6.30pm so that people can get to us through the Whitgift Centre before they close at 7. After that people can get to us from Wellesley Road straight through the Whitgift open air car-park. We’ll be putting balloons up at the Wellesley Road entrance to help anyone who hasn’t visited us before to find us. The band will be starting around 8/8.30pm and it’ll finish around 10.30pm.

Although we’re called Bishops Wine Bar we do sell a range of other drinks; beers, ciders, ales, spirits etc, everything you would expect in a pub, so don’t be put off if you’re not a wine drinker. We’ll also have various drinks deals on the day.

Croydonist: Do you need to book tickets in advance?

Angela: Ideally yes, they’re £12 in advance, you can get them by visiting Cosimo’s 10th Birthday on Eventbrite, or by scanning the QR code on the flyer. We also have some tickets available for £10 in the bar if you pay in cash.

We hope to have a few tickets available on the door at £15, but we’d say buy in advance to guarantee entry.

Croydonist: Bishop’s is certainly a unique and quirky establishment. Can you tell us one final thing that will surprise our readers about it?

Angela: All the restaurant scenes in Peter Strickland’s art-house film ‘In Fabric‘ were filmed inside Bishops. If you haven’t seen it, It’s a deeply odd film, which fitted right in with us as Bishops is a deeply odd place!

Thank you to Angela for chatting with us. If you’ve never visited Bishops we highly recommend you search it out. Why not grab a ticket and head there for the ABBA night on Saturday 26 July. You can follow Bishops on Facebook and Instagram.

Photos by Croydonist

Posted by Julia