Aretha's Lounge Bar

History

Opened Licensed December 2019; Aretha's from 2024

Opened

Early 2020, as LUX Lounge Bar

Aretha's

From January 2024

Building

A shop unit dated to about 1930

Aretha's is a young bar in an old shop. A commercial listing of 2018 describes 7-9 Warwick Road as a shopfront unit with housing above, under eight hundred square feet and dating from about 1930, and it was later marked under offer. The premises licence was applied for new at the end of 2019, with two temporary event notices that December.

It opened early in 2020 as LUX Lounge Bar, which CAMRA's Solway branch described as a modern lounge bar close to the city centre that relied on live music to draw people in. The Lux name ran to more than one address: CAMRA record Lux Delisa, the cafe bar in the Lowther Arcade, as part of the Lux bar on Warwick Road, and the council also has a Lux Salon Wine Bar on Bridge Street.

The licence changed hands on 26 January 2024, with a new designated premises supervisor, and the bar has traded as Aretha's since, still billed in the listings as a live music bar. It is a small lounge at the city end of Warwick Road, on the short stretch with the Andalusian at number 6 and the old Dempseys at 11.