Evans's Music & Supper Room

• Theatre ID
  1068
• Built / Converted
  1835
• Dates of use
  • 1835 - 1880
• Current state
  Façade only
• Current use
  converted to other use (3rd floor used by theatre clubs 1934-40. Fragment only remains)
• Address
  43 King Street, Covent Garden, Westminster, London, WC2, England

Details

No 43 King Street is an early eighteenth century house attributed to Thomas Archer. It was converted to an hotel which, by the 1830s had a thriving supper room. The original song and supper entertainment was held from the mid-1830s in a basement coffee room. It was very popular by the 1840s. Under John Green a large new music hall (to which the old room formed a vestibule & picture gallery) was built to cover almost the whole of the rear garden. This fine hall, by William Finch Hill, is usually dated to 1856 but actually opened in December 1855. With the Canterbury Hall (1854) and Weston’s Music Hall (1857) the new Evans’s set the style and standard for the first generation of giant supper room music halls in London. It was a rectangular, flat-floored room with an open stage, backed by a triumphal arch. The hall was enlarged and improved by J H Rowley in 1871. Although licensed to 1881, it effectively ceased to operate in 1880, but remained as a recognisable room well into the twentieth century. Doubt has been expressed as to whether the Mewes & Davis alterations planned in 1911/12 for the National Sporting Club (in occupation from the 1890s) were ever carried out, but the evidence of a Phil May sketch published in 1932 suggests that they were. The altered Archer house front still dominates a corner of the Piazza and provides telling evidence of disregard for those aspects of architectural history which, until recently, were given scant scholarly attention. In the course of an imperfect 1970s reinstatement of the façe, the iron arched entrance to the early supper room was destroyed (the bits were salvaged by the Museum of London). Nothing is now recognisable of the supper room itself, a key building in the history of music hall.

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• Other names
  Evans's Song & Supper Room
• Events
  • 1835 - 1880 Use:
  • Design/Construction: The house went through many changes in the C18 & C19. The following refer to the parts used for live entertainment only
  • 1835 Alteration: conversion of coffee house
    • Unknown - Architect
  • 1844 Alteration: Supper Room improved
    • Unknown - Architect
  • 1855 Alteration: new large music hall
    • William Finch Hill - Architect
  • 1871 Alteration: hall enlarged; boxes formed all round
    • J H Rowley - Architect
  • 1877 - 1880 Alteration: Array doorway from Piazza given present form
    • Unknown - Architect
  • 1911 - 1912 Alteration: Array further alterations for National Sporting Club
    • Mewes & Davis - Architect
  • 1930 Alteration: altered to serve as fruit warehouse
    • E A Shaw Partners - Architect
  • 1977 Alteration: altered to form offices, last traces of music hall eliminated
    • Fitzroy Robinson - Architect
  • 1835 - 1836 Owner/Management: W C Evans, proprietor & manager
  • 1846 - 1847 Owner/Management: John ‘Paddy’ Green
  • Owner/Management: For subsequent licensees,see Diana Howard, op.cit.
• Listings
  • Grade Not listed
• Unreliable anecdotes
  The Players’ Theatre did not occupy the music hall. Performances took place in an upper room.