On yet another warm evening in London the City Corporation Licensing Committee gathered in the fabulous Wilton's Music Hall to thank our staff and the past Chairman of our committee Marianne Fredericks. A doubly nice pleasure for me to join in thanking my fellow ward colleague who I have served with on the licensing committee for the past 6 years.
Our venue Wilton’s Music Hall is the oldest grand music hall in the world. It presents a year round programme of exceptional live music and world-class productions alongside learning and participation work that engages the local community and schools, and has a rather fascinating back story. The Grade 2 listed building recently completed a 4 year capital project with support from Heritage Lottery Fund and the City Corporation amongst others.
It is just to the South of Commercial Road, within easy walking distance of The Tower of London, the River and the City, Wilton's is a focus for theatrical and East End history as well as a living theatre, concert hall, public bar and heritage site. Wilton’s began life as five houses - 1 to 4 Graces Alley and 19 Wellclose Square. Originally built in the 1690s, the buildings have had various alterations and reconstructions over the years including being combined by John Wilton in the 1860s. The largest house (1 Graces Alley) was an ale house dating from the first half of the 18th century, serving the Scandinavian sea captains and wealthy merchants who lived in neighbouring Wellclose Square.
John Wilton bought the business in c.1850, building his first music hall in place of the previous concert room in 1853. He then replaced it with his ‘Magnificent New Music Hall’ in 1859. He furnished the hall with mirrors, chandeliers and decorative paintwork and installed the finest heating, lighting and ventilation systems of the day.
John Wilton sold up early 1868 but the music hall carried on under a number of different proprietors for another thirteen years. In 1877 a serious fire in the hall left just the four walls and the ten barley twist columns that still support the balcony. The hall was rebuilt and refurbished the following year but with hardly any change to the 1859 design. In 1881 Wilton’s Music Hall closed its doors.
In 1888 Wilton’s was bought by the East London Methodist Mission. The Methodists renamed the building ‘The Mahogany Bar Mission’ and for some time considered it ‘Methodism’s finest hall’. The Mahogany Bar congregation was much reduced and the Mission closed in 1956. It then stood empty for many years.
Starting in the 1970s there were a succession of fund raisers and attempts to bring the theatre back into use, with varying success through the 1980s and 1990s before the ultimate work that sees it as it is today in the 2000s. A fascinating place for our committee dinner, to see first hand a building that shows how licenced entertainment has evolved!