Tune in to The Arches

The past 18 months have seen London’s club scene shrinking faster than Gordon Brown’s credibility, with the most recent funeral being the end of The End, whose final ­weekend saw emotional ravers grab what mementoes they could before the
much-loved venue was handed over to property developers.

Happily, for every club door closing, another soon opens and the focus is shifting to London Bridge, where a number of new venues and nights are opening up.

One of the most promising is We Fear Silence, a weekly Friday night event run by Ajay Jayaram and Ryan Ashmore, former promoters at The End.

Housed in The Arches, a giant 1,200-capacity venue around the corner from London Bridge station and Borough Market, it promises to deliver something similar to The End’s eclectic, high-­quality nights — everything from drum&bass to techno. We headed down to the opening party to check out what’s sure to be one of the hottest new nights.

As well as three rooms of music, The Arches boasts a massive separate bar area with plenty of sofas and no loud music, so you can ease yourself in and have a conversation while still coherent enough to do so. We pay our £15 entry and head straight to this comfy bar area. A £2 promotion on beers (normally £3.50) means that sadly the period of coherence doesn’t last very long.

Before hitting the dancefloor we discover a huge outdoor smoking area. Filling a whole railway arch, which is open at either end, there’s no annoying queueing for fresh air and a fag — and no getting wet if the English weather decides to do what it does best.

In the main room it’s not only house music all night long but Ben Watt himself, who is playing a marathon set from 10pm to the 6am close.

By 2am on a huge mounted platform at one end of the impressively lit railway arch, Watt has what looks like a heaving capacity crowd going wild to pulsing, rhythmical techno pumping out of the crystal-clear sound system. Feeling the effects of the cheap drinks, we can’t help but wonder what he’s going to do about going to the loo.

But if Room 1 impresses with its size, next door’s Room 2 — where Dirty Bird’s Tim Green is coming to a close — is all intimacy and sensory overload. On the packed dancefloor gyrating to heavy four-four beats, we’re momentarily disorientated (in a good way) by the lights. With eight lights shone at seven disco balls green shards of light fly everywhere. It looks like the kind of security systems you see in hi-tech heist movies.

Danced out and ready for a soft drink we venture into the furthest room. There DJs play broken beats, but it’s much lighter and more bar-orientated with further places to sit down and take a breather.

We’re soon chatting with Katie, 25, who is over from Paris and has Aphrodite ­tattooed on her left arm ("I’m a Taurus") and an artichoke on her left ("I just like them"). "I love the different ambiances in the rooms," she says. "I don’t go clubbing much in Paris because of sleazy guys, but it’s not like that here." W e head back in to hear Watt still preaching the gospel of house from his elevated pulpit to an enraptured congregation. "The music is really good," smiles Mark, 27, a programmer living in Putney. "It reminds me of The Cross here. I like that there’s a place to talk and somewhere outside that’s not too removed."