Queen's Hall

Wikipedia contributors · CC BY-SA · EN · 04/10/2026

The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect Thomas Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts ("The Proms") founded by Robert Newman together with Henry Wood. The hall had drab décor and cramped seating but superb acoustics. It became known as the "musical centre of the [British] Empire", and several of the leading musicians and composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries performed there, including Claude Debussy, Edward Elgar, Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss.

In the 1930s, the hall became the main London base of two new orchestras, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. These two ensembles raised the standards of orchestral playing in London to new heights, and the hall's resident orchestra, founded in 1893, was eclipsed and it disbanded in 1930. The new orchestras attracted another generation of musicians from Europe and the United States, including Serge Koussevitzky, Willem Mengelberg, Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter and Felix Weingartner.

In 1941, during the Second World War, the building was destroyed by incendiary bombs in the London Blitz. Despite much lobbying for the hall to be rebuilt, the government decided against doing so. The main musical functions of the Queen's Hall were taken over by the Royal Albert Hall for the Proms, and the new Royal Festival Hall for the general concert season.

Background

The site on which the hall was built was bounded by the present-day Langham Place, Riding House Street and Great Portland Street. In 1820 the land was bought by the Crown during the development of John Nash's Regent Street. Between then and the building of the hall, the site was first sublet to a coachmaker and stablekeeper, and in 1851 a bazaar occupied the site. In 1887, the leaseholder, Francis Ravenscroft, negotiated a building agreement with the Crown, providing for the clearing of the site and the erection of a new concert hall. The name of the new building was intended to be either the "Victoria Concert Hall" or the "Queen's Concert Hall". The name finally chosen, the "Queen's Hall", was decided very shortly before the hall opened. The historian Robert Elkin speculates that the alternative "Victoria Concert Hall" was abandoned as liable to confusion with the "Royal Victoria Music Hall", the formal name of the Old Vic.

The new hall was to provide a much-needed music venue in the centre of London. St James's Hall, just south of Oxford Circus, was too small, had serious safety problems, and was so poorly ventilated as to be unpleasant. Bernard Shaw in his capacity as a music critic commented on "the old unvaried round of Steinway Hall, Prince's Hall and St James's Hall", and warmly welcomed the new building.

Construction

Ravenscroft commissioned the architect Thomas Edward Knightley to design the new hall. Using a floor plan previously prepared by C. J. Phipps, Knightley designed a hall with a floor area of 21,000 square feet (2,000 m²) and an audience capacity of 2,500. Contemporary newspapers commented on the unusual elevation of the building, with the grand tier at street level, and the stalls and arena downstairs. The exterior carving was by Sidney W. Elmes and Son, and the furnishing was by Lapworth Brothers and Harrison. The lighting was a combination of gas and electricity.

The original decor consisted of grey and terracotta walls, Venetian red seating, large red lampshades suspended just above the orchestra's heads, mirrors surrounding the arena, and portraits of the leading composers to the sides of the platform. The paintwork was intended to be the colour of "the belly of a London mouse", and Knightley is said to have kept a string of dead mice in the paint shop in order to ensure the correct tone. The arena had moveable seating on a "brownish carpet that blended with the dull fawnish colour of the walls". The arched ceiling had an elaborate painting of the Paris Opéra, by Carpegat. Of the accompanying details of the painting, E. M. Forster remarked on "the attenuated Cupids who encircle the ceiling of the Queen's Hall, inclining each to each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow pantaloons".

In the centre of the arena there was a fountain containing pebbles, goldfish and waterlilies. According to the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, "Every three or four minutes some fascinating young female fell into the fountain and had to be rescued by a chivalrous swain. It must have happened thirty-five times every night. Foreigners came from all parts of Europe to see it". At the top of the building, adjoining the conservatory, was the Queen's Small Hall, seating 500, for recitals, chamber-music concerts and other small-scale presentations. In July 1894, Bernard Shaw described it as "cigar-shaped with windows in the ceiling, and reminiscent of a ship's saloon … now much the most comfortable of our small concert rooms". The hall provided modern facilities, open frontage for carriages and parking room, a press room, public spaces and bars.

At the time, and subsequently, the hall was celebrated for its superb acoustics, unmatched by any other large hall in London. Soon after its opening, Shaw praised it as "a happy success acoustically". Knightley followed the example of earlier buildings noted for fine acoustics; the walls of the auditorium were lined with wood, fixed clear of the walls on thick battens, and coarse canvas was stretched over the wood and then sealed and decorated. He calculated that the unbroken surface and the wooden lining would be "like the body of the violin – resonant". The Observer commented that the building resembled a violin in construction and shape, and also that "the ground plan of the orchestra was founded on the bell of a horn".

Shortly before the opening, Ravenscroft appointed Robert Newman as manager. Newman had already had three different careers, as a stockjobber, a bass soloist, and a concert agent. The rest of his career was associated with the Queen's Hall, and the names of the hall and the manager became synonymous.

Early years

The Queen's Hall first opened its doors on 25 November 1893. Newman gave a children's party in the afternoon, and in the evening 2,000 invited guests attended what Elkin describes as "a sort of private view", with popular selections played by the Band of the Coldstream Guards, and songs, piano and organ solos performed by well-known musicians. After the performances, the seats in the arena were removed, lavish refreshments were served, and the guests danced.

On 27 November there was a smoking concert given by the Royal Amateur Orchestral Society, of which Prince Alfred (the second son of Queen Victoria) was both patron and leader. The performance was attended by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Connaught. Knightley had built a royal box in the grand circle, but Prince Alfred told Newman, "my brother would never sit in that", and Newman had it demolished. The royal party was seated in armchairs in the front of the stalls (pictured right). The programme consisted of orchestral works by Sullivan, Gounod, Auber, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky, and solos from the violinist Tivadar Nachéz and the baritone David Ffrangcon-Davies.

The official opening of the hall took place on 2 December. Frederic Hymen Cowen conducted; the National Anthem was sung by Emma Albani and a choir of 300 voices assembled at short notice by Newman; Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise followed, with Albani, Margaret Hoare and Edward Lloyd as soloists. In the second part of the programme there was a performance of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, with Frederick Dawson as soloist.

From the autumn of 1894, the hall was adopted as the venue for the annual winter season of concerts of the Philharmonic Society of London, which had formerly been held at St James's Hall. At the first Philharmonic concert at the Queen's Hall, Alexander Mackenzie conducted the first performance in England of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony, which was so well received that it was repeated, by popular acclaim, at the next concert. During the 1894–95 season, Edvard Grieg and Camille Saint-Saëns conducted performances of their works. The Society remained at the Queen's Hall until 1941.

Promenade concerts

To fill the hall during the heat of the late-summer period, when London audiences tended to stay away from theatres and concert halls, Newman planned to run a ten-week season of promenade concerts, with low-priced tickets to attract a wider audience than that of the main season. Costs needed to be kept down, and Newman decided not to engage a star conductor, but invited the young and little known Henry Wood to conduct the whole season. There had been various seasons of promenade concerts in London since 1838, under conductors from Louis Antoine Jullien to Arthur Sullivan. Sullivan's concerts in the 1870s had been particularly successful because he offered his audiences something more than the usual light music. He introduced major classical works, such as Beethoven symphonies, normally restricted to the more expensive concerts presented by the Philharmonic Society and others. Newman aimed to do the same: "I am going to run nightly concerts and train the public by easy stages. Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music".

Newman's determination to make the promenade concerts attractive to everyone led him to permit smoking during concerts, which was not formally prohibited at the Proms until 1971. Refreshments were available in all parts of the hall throughout the concerts, not only during intervals. Prices were about one fifth of those customarily charged for classical concerts: the promenade (the standing area) was one shilling, the balcony two shillings, and the grand circle (reserved seats) three and five shillings.

Newman needed to find financial backing for his first season. Dr George Cathcart, a wealthy ear, nose and throat specialist, offered to sponsor it on two conditions: that Wood should conduct every concert, and that the pitch of the orchestral instruments should be lowered to the European standard diapason normal. Concert pitch in England was nearly a semitone higher than that used on the continent, and Cathcart regarded it as damaging for singers' voices. Wood, who was a singing teacher as well as a conductor, agreed. The brass and woodwind players of the Queen's Hall Orchestra were unwilling to buy new low-pitched instruments; Cathcart imported a set from Belgium and lent them to the players. After a season, the players recognised that the low pitch would be permanently adopted, and they bought the instruments from him.

On 10 August 1895, the first of the Queen's Hall Promenade Concerts took place. It opened with Wagner's overture to Rienzi, but the rest of the programme comprised, in the words of a historian of the Proms, David Cox, "for the most part ... blatant trivialities". Newman and Wood gradually tilted the balance from light music to mainstream classical works; within days of the opening concert, Schubert's Unfinished Symphony and further excerpts from Wagner operas were performed. Among the other symphonies presented during the first season were Schubert's Great C Major, Mendelssohn's Italian and Schumann's Fourth. The concertos included Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Schumann's Piano Concerto. During the season there were 23 novelties, including the London premieres of pieces by Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, Massenet and Rimsky-Korsakov. Newman and Wood soon felt able to devote every Monday night of the season principally to Wagner and every Friday night to Beethoven, a pattern that endured for decades.

Other presentations

Many events at the Queen's Hall were not presented by Newman. The hall was frequently let to organisations such as the Bach Choir and the Philharmonic Society (from 1903 the Royal Philharmonic Society), and later the London Choral Society and Royal Choral Society. The hall was used for a wide range of other activities, including balls, military band concerts under Sousa, lectures, public meetings, Morris dancing, Eurythmics and religious services. On 14 January 1896, the UK's first public film show was presented at the Queen's Hall to members and wives of the Royal Photographic Society by the maker of the Kineopticon and Fellow of the society, Birt Acres, and his colleague, Arthur Melbourne-Cooper. This was an improved version of the early Kinetoscope.

Newman continued to be interested in new entertainments. The music hall entertainer Albert Chevalier persuaded him to instigate variety performances in the Queen's Small Hall from 16 January 1899. These shows were well received; The Times commented that Chevalier's "vogue with the cultured classes is as great and as permanent as with his former patrons".

Source and attribution

Adapted from “Queen's Hall” by English Wikipedia contributors. Main paragraphs and sections are retained; tables, reference markers and technical markup are omitted. This is an encyclopedic adaptation, not a personal review. Original revision and contributor history ↗. Text is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗. Check current visitor access, tickets and transport with the relevant operator.