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The History Of Wilton’s Music Hall
By John Earl
Wilton's Music Hall is the product of that historically crucial period,
1850 to 1870, during which the first 'classic' music halls emerged. It
was, until comparatively recent clearances, totally concealed behind what
was once the Prince of Denmark pub in Graces Alley, leading from Well
Street (now Ensign Street) to Marine Square (now Wellclose Square)
The land which was to be laid out with Marine Square and its approaches
was purchased from the Crown in 1682 by Nicholas Barbon. Building leases
of terms 'not exceeding 61 years' were granted to a variety of lessees
from 1683, but progress seems to have occurred slowly over the next 10
years or more. Although seventeenth century artifacts have been found
on site no fabric of this first period of building is now recognisable.
What is seen today is probably the result of rebuilding when the first
leases expired in the mid-eighteenth century, followed by modi€cations
and improvements in the nineteenth century. Straight joints between the
facades suggest that the eighteenth century rebuildings were sequential
rather than simultaneous.
The name of the pub is unlikely to have been inspired by Hamlet, but
rather by the presence of Scandinavian merchant families who attended
the Danish church in the Square and by the importance to the local economy
of the Baltic timber trade. Small, low grade pub concert rooms and dance
halls, designed (like the local gambling houses, opium dens and brothels)
to attract sailors and part them from their money, were to be found at
close intervals along the Highway and other dockside streets.
In 1828, when Matthew Eltham first held the license, the Prince of Denmark
was no more than a three-windows-wide building between party walls in
a row of otherwise two-bay premises of domestic scale. The neighbours
were, at different times, a pastry cook, an importer of leeches, a hairdresser
and a tobacconist. The Wellclose Square area was, at that time, socially
mixed, with the houses of well-to-do timber merchants a short step away
from distressed and dangerous warrens in which one of the principal industries
was providing for the entertainment and exploitation of the thousands
of seafarers who came to the Port of London from all parts of the world.
The City reaches of the East End had had a strong
theatrical tradition. In 1741, David Garrick made his first London appearance
in Odell’s Goodman's Fields theatre in Alie Street, a few hundred
yards from the Square. The Garrick Saloon theatre in Leman Street was
active from 1831 and the Whitechapel Pavilion, a little farther away,
from 1828. The theatre site which was actually nearest to the Prince of
Denmark was that of the Royalty, built in 1787, but this had been replaced
in 1828 by the short-lived Royal Brunswick which fell down in that year
and was never rebuilt.
Eltham's lease was long enough to justify some investment in what might
have been seen as one of the better locations in a
visibly declining but heavily populated, hard drinking, fast spending
area. He was reputedly one of the first publicans to install mahogany
counters and €ttings. As a result, although the pub retained its old name,
it became far better known locally as the Mahogany Bar, a name which was,
until quite recent times, still current. The Mahogany Bar was said to
have been 'better known on the water fronts of San Francisco than St Paul's
Cathedral'.
The Albion Saloon, as it was known, was not allowed to open before 5pm.
Drinking and smoking were forbidden in the auditorium, no refreshment
tickets were to be issued ('wet money', with the value of a refreshment
ticket being redeemable in drink, was the normal way of charging for admission
to concert rooms) and the place had to be given a separate entrance through
the rear yard so that patrons would not have to pass through bars or taprooms.It
could only be a matter of time before all pretence of running a theatre
was dropped. Eltham returned to non-dramatic, variety entertainment with
a concert room licensed by the magistrates, followed up with energy and
enterprise by his successor, John Wilton, from Bath. Wilton took over
from Eltham in 1850.
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