St. George's Hall, London
51°31′4″N 0°8′33″W / 51.51778°N 0.14250°W
St. George's Hall was a theatre located in Langham Place, off Regent Street in the West End of London. It was built in 1867 and closed in 1966. The hall could accommodate between 800 and 900 persons,[1] or up to 1,500 persons including the galleries. The architect was John Taylor of Whitehall.[2]
The hall was known for three decades for its presentation of the
German Reed Entertainments and lectures
The hall was built as a concert hall for the New Philharmonic Society and opened on 24 April 1867. The Hall could be used as a theatre, however, and the first production at "St. George's Theatre" was A Woman's Whim by Walter Stephens on 3 December 1867.[2]
The pieces premiered there included W. S. Gilbert's farce, A Medical Man (1872) and his one-act comic opera, Eyes and No Eyes (1875). John Baldwin Buckstone wrote Married Life, and John Maddison Morton wrote Slasher and Crasher for the hall, both in 1872.[4] In addition to performances, there were regular lectures in the hall, the Chartist Gerald Massey gave a series of lectures in 1872, on Christianity and Spiritualism.[5] The theist Charles Voysey gave regular Sunday sermons from 1875, after his ejection from the established church. H. G. Wells described a visit to one tedious Sunday lecture in Incidental Thoughts on a Bald Head.[6] When they were not presenting a piece at the hall, it was rented it out to amateurs or other entertainments.[2]
At the hall
Fanny Holland starred in many of the entertainments, along with Mr. and Mrs. German Reed, their son Alfred, Holland's husband Arthur Law, Corney Grain, Arthur Cecil (all of whom also wrote for the hall) Carlotta Carrington and Leonora Braham, who made her professional stage debut in 1870 at the hall in a revival of Gilbert and Clay's Ages Ago, which was revived again there in 1874.[2] Except for a brief stint at the Criterion Theatre in 1874 and at the Savoy Theatre in 1879-80, Holland starred at St. George's until 1895 in entertainments too numerous to name. Many of the entertainments were written by Law, including A Night Surprise (1877), Nobody's Fault, composed by Hamilton Clarke (1882), and A Happy Bungalow, with music by Charles King Hall. Other pieces from the 1870s starring Holland included Number 204 by F. C. Burnand, with music by Thomas German Reed; and Our New Doll's House by W. Wye, with music by Cotsford Dick.
Later uses of the hall
After the German Reed Entertainments closed in 1895, the building changed its name to the Matinee Theatre, on 17 April 1897, presenting "high class vaudeville," but it was not very successful. A series of German plays were then produced, but in 1904 the hall closed.
In 1905, magician John Nevil Maskelyne renovated, expanded and reopened the 'St George's Hall, England's New Home of Mystery,' on 24 January 1905 with The Coming Race by David Christie Murray and Maskelyne. Maskelyne's entertainments were called Maskelyne's Theatre of Mystery.[2] The theatre also hosted meetings of The Magic Circle, an association of amateur and professional magicians, and its members David Devant and Maskelyne continued to give magic shows for many years.[9] One was called Maskelyne and Devant's Mysteries, which was presented in August 1910.[2]
The hall was also used as a Bioscope Picture Palace, although with a reduced capacity of 500.[10] The building also was used as the headquarters of the London Academy of Music. The hall was later converted to use as a skating rink.[11]
St. George's was finally acquired by
The hall sustained extensive damage from bombing in September 1940, May 1941 (when the Queen's Hall across the road was destroyed) and March 1943.[13] The BBC studios moved to the Aeolian Hall, in New Bond Street. The building was demolished in 1966, and together with the Queen's Hall site the location was used for the construction of the St George's Hotel and Henry Wood House.
Notes
- Dickens's Dictionary of London. Retrieved 22 August 2007.
- ^ a b c d e f g History of the Hall from the Arthur Lloyd website
- ^ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1896). . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 47. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 395.
- ^ Contemporary playbill (13 May 1872) accessed 16 Apr 2007
- ^ The Langham Place lectures 1872 – Gerald Massey accessed 16 Apr 2007
- ^ Incidental Thoughts on a Bald Head accessed 16 Apr 2007
- ^ "Death Of Mr. Eric Lewis", The Times, 2 April 1935, p. 12
- ^ Scowcroft, Phil. A Forty-sixth Garland of British Light Music Composers", MusicWeb-International.com, accessed 7 February 2016
- ^ Information about The Magic Circle club's connection to the theatre accessed 14 April 2007
- ^ Bioscope Annual Report 1910-11 p.87 accessed 16 April 2007
- ^ Notes that the hall was later converted into a skating rink accessed 14 April 2007
- ^ BBC Theatre Organ, St George's Hall
- ^ Institute of Broadcast Sound accessed 16 April 2007
External links
- Gänzl, Kurt, The British Musical Theatre, Macmillan, vol.I, London, 1986.
- Information about Nobody's Fault (1882) and other early productions at the theatre, and information about Fanny Holland, principal actress at the theatre
- Information about concerts given at the hall in 1899
- History of the Hall With original archive programmes.