Sadler's Wells Theatre

Sadler's Wells Theatre, is situated near the New River Head, about the third of a mile on the left hand side of the Islington-road, going from the north end of St. John-street towards Islington. Its performances are limited to burlettas, ballets, pantomimes, melo-dramas and such like, and is open from Easter Monday to October.

Sadler's Wells Theatre. See Sadler's Wells.

Sadler's Music House, 1684–99

Sadler's acre of ground was more than three times as long east to west as it was deep, and stretched from the Outer Pond at New River Head to the Islington road (now St John Street) in the east. The west side tapered to align with a field path running south-west to north-east, the line of the modern Arlington Way. The music house stood near the west end of this property, while the well itself is described by Guidott as in its garden, and in the anonymous tract as in Sadler's 'Back-side'. That might accord with the location of the well that survives today in the basement of the modern theatre, which would have been near the northern boundary of Sadler's land, between the music house and the brick boundary wall. It was probably under the small roofed structure visible between the music house and the boundary wall in the earliest datable view of Sadler's Wells, of 1730, by Bernard Lens (Ill. 180). The whole of the long narrow site stretching eastwards from the music house and well was laid out as gardens with many trees. The entrance to Sadler's grounds and the music house was through a gate on the west side, roughly where the Arlington Way entrance into the foyer of the theatre is today (see Ill. 97, page 86); there was possibly another gate in the boundary wall near the well itself.

It is difficult to form a definitive picture of the early building or buildings on the site. Both 1684 tracts indicate that the music house was already in existence in 1683, and therefore not built to take advantage of the newly discovered wells. Most accounts of the music house have assumed that it was a purpose-built wooden concert room. But the earliest images appear to show a building that is at least partly of brick (Ills 180, 181). The probability is that the great brick messuage referred to by Sadler and the music house were one and the same. Sadler described his messuage as a 'publique house', but 'musick house' in his day seems to have connoted just that—a pub with musical entertainment as an extra attraction. (fn. 10) Nevertheless, neither Sadler nor Langley mentions a room in either of Sadler's messuages designed specifically for musical performances, perhaps preferring not to draw attention to this type of entertainment for fear of alerting the licensing authorities. Ned Ward in the Weekly Comedy of 24 May 1699 and Garbott in the 1720s (see below) describe a show-room or play-room which may have been a separate structure, or more likely a brick or wooden extension to Sadler's original brick messuage, as maps and plans always show a single building on the site.

Although the diarist John Evelyn visited in 1686 he did not record anything of what Sadler's Wells was like. A more informative early source is François Colsoni's Le Guide de Londres Pour Les Étrangers, published in 1693. Colsoni describes visiting Islington where there are 'two pretty houses' (that is to say, Sadler's Wells and New Tunbridge Wells) 'where one can go in the mornings to drink excellent mineral waters'. (fn. 11) Entrance to each cost threepence, for which the visitor could taste the waters, walk in the gardens and hear a concert of violins. This modest entry fee gives a flavour of the low ambitions of Sadler's Wells, as central London concert rooms at the time charged 2s 6d, and even suburban music houses at Richmond, Lambeth and Hampstead charged a shilling; only Epsom Wells—which did not charge women at all for entry—seems to have been comparable to Sadler's Wells. (fn. 12) At Sadler's Wells, Colsoni describes the additional attractions of dancing, English billiards, Royal Oak (a game of chance), and lotteries (that year Edward Sadler was listed as the proprietor of a lottery in the 1693–4 Four Shillings in the Pound Aid). (fn. 13) The fact that Sadler ran a lottery is consistent with the character of his other entertainments.

In a more satirical and therefore perhaps less accurate vein, Richard Ames and Ned Ward both wrote verses describing visits to Sadler's Wells and New Tunbridge Wells in 1691 and 1699 respectively. Both get comic mileage out of the socially diverse company and, especially, these venues' reputations as haunts of prostitutes and the dissolute, but also convey information about the buildings. In Ames's Islington-Wells it is hard to determine which of his descriptions apply to Sadler's Wells or New Tunbridge Wells as, being almost adjoining, they effectively constituted a single pleasure-seeker's destination. (fn. 14) Ned Ward's Walk to Islington is at once more informative and more scurrilous and colourful. He is the first to describe the inside of Sadler's Wells and its music room. Visiting New Tunbridge Wells and finding themselves in need of food and drink, he and his (newly made) female friend 'turn into Sadler's for sake of the Organ'. They are conducted upstairs to the gallery adjoining the organ 'Where lovers o'er cheesecakes were Scraping and Humming'. From the gallery, which appears from this and other early accounts to have been socially a marginally superior area, they look over into the pit where a huge throng is being entertained by a succession of low-grade singers, fiddlers and an 11-year-old sword dancer. The gallery is painted with allegorical scenes of a lubricious nature, featuring among others Apollo, Europa and Neptune. (fn. 15)

Noticeably absent from Ward's account is the taking of the waters. These appear to have dried up between May 1693 when the waters were advertised in the London Gazette, and an announcement in the Post-boy of June 1697 which stated that 'Sadler's excellent Steel Waters at Islington, having been obstructed for some years past, are now opened and currant again'; newspaper advertisements for the waters continued till 1700 but they had clearly been eclipsed by this time by the other entertainments on offer. In July 1697 an 'extraordinary consort of vocal and instrumental musick' lasting two hours was advertised. (fn. 16) Sadler himself appears to have died in 1699, (fn. 17) and the building is referred to as 'Miles's musick house' from that year, although the name Sadler's Wells persisted. (fn. 18)

The Miles in question was James Miles, a glover who died in 1724 (perhaps a relative of Jonathan Miles, Sadler's landlord in 1684 at what became New Tunbridge Wells). During Miles's stewardship of Sadler's Wells it retained its reputation for low-grade entertainment—a man eating a live cockerel was one 'turn'—and rowdy, even violent behaviour. It was described as a 'nursery of debauchery' in 1711, and the next year a man named Ingram Thwaits was killed in the gallery (the trial record calls it a 'box', suggesting the gallery was at this date divided laterally). (fn. 19) In 1714 Miles was running the Gun Musick-Booth, one of the many such booths at Bartholomew Fair, which offered a similar mix of wine, music, tumblers and ladder dancers to Sadler's Wells. (fn. 20)

During his proprietorship it is said that Miles 'improved and beautified' the music house. (fn. 21) Until the late 1720s or early 1730s Sadler's Wells seems to have consisted of the great brick messuage built by Sadler—that is, a two storey brick building, square or possibly cruciform in plan (including the projecting gallery and boxes), with additional wooden, possibly short-lived structures such as the 'brewhouse' and 'appurtenances' mentioned in Sadler's deposition of 1684. (fn. 22)

Miles renewed the lease for five years in 1719 (the earliest surviving lease), paying £70 a year to the Lloyd family (freeholders of the site until 1883). (fn. 23) When he died in 1724 his will made no mention of Sadler's Wells, so it seems likely that he had already passed it on to his sonin-law, Francis Forcer. Trained as a barrister, Forcer appears in the ratebooks for the area by 1724 and renewed the lease for 21 years with the Lloyds in 1730. (fn. 24) Some accounts state that his father, a composer of the same name, owned the Wells immediately after Sadler, but there is no contemporary evidence for this. (fn. 25) Judging from incremental rises in his rent between 1730 and 1733, it seems that it was in this period that Forcer made the first major additions to Sadler's Wells, especially as it was from 1732 that he began to insure the building, apparently for the first time. (fn. 26)

It is almost certainly Forcer's enlarged Sadler's Wells that can be seen in one of the headpieces of The Universal Harmony, or the Gentlemen and Ladies Social Companion, a collection of sheet music published in 1743 (Ill. 182). This shows a two-storey building of two ranges, the larger one with seven bays facing the Outer Pond at New River Head, the smaller one running along the northern boundary of the site. Of the seven windows along the main front only the three on the right or south end are sashes, suggesting that part was an addition, possibly 'for the purpose of habitation'. (fn. 27) That is supported by the description of the property as 'Sadler's Wells and the dwelling house' in Forcer's insurance policy for 1732. (fn. 28) The entry in the register suggests that Sadler's Wells—specifically noted as a brick building—consisted of one building roughly 50 ft by 33 ft, probably the main seventeenth-century block, including Forcer's new domestic addition in its southern end; another, 33 ft by 12 ft, which was probably the adjoining new or rebuilt north range running along or near the north boundary; and a third structure, 20 ft by 9 ft, probably the ancillary building to the north east, already on the site and shown in a print of 1731 (Ill. 181).

A New River survey, dated to 1741, is broadly consistent with this analysis (Ill. 178). It shows a circular pond to the east with avenues of trees and attached rectangular areas either side, possibly paving. It seems likely that it was in this early 1730s remodelling that Forcer added the pedimented gate inscribed 'Sadler's Wells' shown in the 1743 print and in Hogarth's Evening of 1738. Hogarth's print, not intended as a reliable topographical record, shows only the gate and part of the south end of Sadler's Wells.

Further enlargement is suggested by another survey of the New River made in 1743 (see Ills 97, 239, pages 86, 187), which indicates that by then the enlarged Wells occupied the full north—south depth of the site. Forcer had by then apparently added a small structure on to the south side of the dwelling house and other ancillary buildings stretching along the northern boundary.

Forcer was living at Sadler's Wells when he died in April 1743. His will directed that his interest in the Wells be sold after his death to pay off his mortgage on another property, and in December of that year his widow Catherine assigned the lease to John Warren, merchant, of Clerkenwell. (fn. 29) It was under Warren's brief period of management that the Grand Jury of Middlesex censured Sadler's Wells and a number of other theatres and gaming houses as 'places kept apart for the encouragement of luxury, extravagance, idleness, and other wicked illegal purposes', and temporarily closed it down. (fn. 30)

Building and rebuilding by Thomas Rosoman, 1746–9 and 1764

It has long been believed that Sadler's Wells Theatre was 'an old wooden building', dating back to Sadler's day, when it was rebuilt in brick by Thomas Rosoman in 1764. But this is incorrect. It is clear from insurance records that what Rosoman actually rebuilt in 1764 was a wooden theatre he himself had erected in 1748–9. It appears, too, that Rosoman's wooden theatre may have been a much-reduced version of a decidedly ambitious building projected for the site—how seriously it is impossible to say—for which some intriguing pictorial evidence survives.

Vintner, actor, and former manager of the New Wells near by, Rosoman, and his associate Peter Hough, a tumbler, took a 21-year lease of Sadler's Wells from Christmas 1745. (fn. 31) Their lease gives some idea of the proliferation of buildings on the site by this date, listing, along with the main building, a brewhouse, storehouse, stables, granary, sheds and outhouses. This impression of a diverse collection of buildings is confirmed by the description of the property when Rosoman insured it in April 1748. (fn. 32) At that time the value of the buildings was put at £700, as compared to £400 in 1739. The domestic part of the property was evidently a handsome house, described as being of two storeys with garrets, and containing seven rooms, five wainscotted and two half-wainscotted, with four Portland-stone chimneypieces. What is not clear is how far the buildings were the result of work by Forcer or earlier owners, or by Rosoman himself. Something that does certainly seem to have been new in 1748 was a series of 'Drinking rooms, 2 storey', described in later policies as 'drinking boxes'.

With these drinking boxes there appears to be a link with the plan and elevation of an unnamed eighteenth-century theatre, almost certainly Sadler's Wells, copied in the nineteenth century from earlier drawings now presumed lost (Ill. 183). (fn. 33) The buildings shown consist of a large galleried theatre adjoining a three-sided, cloister-like structure lined with two storeys of open-fronted alcoves or boxes, likely to have been south-facing; the means of access to the upper level of boxes is not indicated. A secondary stage, fronted by an orchestra pit and open to the courtyard, is placed asymmetrically on the long side of the 'cloister' and backs against the stage of the main theatre. If this scheme does indeed relate to Rosoman's tenure of Sadler's Wells, it suggests that he was seeking to emulate the great pleasure gardens of Vauxhall and Ranelagh which acquired private boxes of the type shown during the 1730s or 40s. (fn. 34)

When Rosoman renewed his insurance in 1749 and had the site resurveyed, the collection of buildings included a new playhouse of 2,080 sq.ft. The property was insured for £1,200:£600 for brick buildings and £600 for timber. Given that the year before only £100 had been allowed for timber building and the amount for brick was the same, it is almost certain that this new playhouse was largely or wholly of timber. (fn. 35) Measuring just 52 ft by 40 ft, it was less than half the size of the theatre in the putative Sadler's Wells drawing, though comparable with the surviving 1780s theatre at Richmond in North Yorkshire.

The exact location of this timber playhouse, which survived only fifteen years, is unknown, but it was probably built on to the back of the original music house, running east-north-east. If the plan showing the theatre and the drinking boxes may be taken as a guide, most of the seating would have been on benches, with stalls fronting the ground floor of the auditorium, an open pit behind, and a gallery above round three sides, perhaps with private boxes at the lower level. Rosoman's advertisements for the period indicate that entry to the boxes (where according to the plan seats might be reserved) was 2s 6d, which included a pint of wine, but to the pit and gallery only one shilling. (fn. 36) Conditions were cramped, the benches accessible only from narrow walkways, described evocatively on the plan as 'gin and water passages'. The entertainment on stage was apparently seen as an adjunct to the main event of an evening's drinking. Rosoman introduced seats with ledged shelves behind to accommodate wine bottles and glasses. (fn. 37)

The theatre appears to have remained in this structural form until 1764 when the press announced that 'Sadler's Wells is now rebuilt, and confidently enlarged'. (fn. 38) The rebuilding was accomplished, it was said at the time, in seven weeks. A figure of £4,225 was mentioned, but given that Rosoman insured the new theatre and dwelling house only for £2,000 this may have been a generous 'talking up'. (fn. 39) Thomas Lloyd, on behalf of the freeholder, his brother, the Rev. John Lloyd, was unimpressed with the quality of the work, and rejected Rosoman's claim that he had spent 'a large sum' on rebuilding: 'nor do I look on the place one bit the better for the owner for it … it was understood you intended to build a Palace equivalent in some degree to the fortune you have acquired there'. Lloyd estimated that fortune at £40,000 and claimed that the terms of Rosoman's recent lease, involving a fine of only £250 (as opposed to the £500 originally sought), were 'extremely moderate' and that his brother could have had '£1,000 for such a lease'. (fn. 40)

The new theatre, at 109 ft by 52 ft 6 in, covered more than twice the area of Rosoman's wooden building, and seems to have occupied the sites of both this and Sadler's original music-house. (fn. 41) It was orientated, like every theatre on the site since, with the side of the auditorium and stage more or less parallel with the northern boundary of the site. Although no image survives of the original interior, a later description states: 'At this time the sides of the house were occupied by two tiers of Galleries, which were of equal price, and communicated with each other, so that the occupants might ascend or descend at their pleasure. They were flat with one long seat fixed to the wall, besides moveable benches'. (fn. 42) A projecting staircase bay at the front of the theatre giving access to the gallery features in all the surviving images, but may not have been part of the original building, as the insurance policy does not list the gallery stairs separately until later. (fn. 43) Possibly this separate entrance was added to divide the rougher elements using the gallery from the more genteel occupants of the boxes.

Rosoman also rebuilt the domestic quarters to the south as a four-bay house of two storeys and garrets, with a pedimented entrance adjoining the theatre (Ill. 184). To the side was a canted two-storey bay with a balustrade, and another pedimented doorway. The proportions suggest that Rosoman, not a man to spend money unnecessarily, might have substantially remodelled rather than wholly rebuilt the existing house of the 1730s, reusing existing fabric where possible. Most of the new portions of the rebuilt house, apart from the south-west corner, appear to have been at the rear, as the new house was deeper than the old. One report also mentions the use of 'old materials' in building the new theatre. (fn. 44)

Outside, Rosoman put up a brick wall, with iron railings and gates, from the north-west corner of the theatre to the south-west corner of the site, along what is now Arlington Way. (fn. 45) He also added iron chains and lamps along the southern boundary. (fn. 46)

Under new management, 1771–c.1802

The new theatre was clearly a good investment for Rosoman. In October 1771 he sold his interest in it for £9,500, and when he died in 1782 left a reputed £40,000. (fn. 47) The purchaser of the lease, backed by City bankers, was Thomas King, the Covent Garden actor and sometime manager, who had assumed some role in the management of the Wells from 1769. (fn. 48) Despite his connection with the legitimate theatre, King did little to alter Rosoman's winning formula of entertainments. However, he did apparently aspire to alter the tone. In September 1771 he announced misleadingly that 'This is the last week of the company Performing for Wine'. (fn. 49) This caused such consternation among regulars, who inferred that wine would no longer be served, that King had to write to the newspapers before the following season to clarify— wine would be available. What he had actually meant was that the buying of drink would no longer be the requirement for admission. But insofar as the purchase of a 3s ticket now entitled the holder to a pint of Port, Lisbon, 'mountain' or punch, there was not a whole lot of difference. (fn. 50) Raising the tone did little for takings, according to King himself who complained in 1775 that the rise in social class of the clientele had damaged the business compared to when Sadler's Wells had been 'frequented by the meaner sort of people only'. (fn. 51)

When the theatre reopened in Easter 1772 it had been 'altered and beautified'. The only alterations specifically recorded were a new coach house, stables and scene house (probably the tall lean-to visible in later prints), all timberbuilt, adjoining the back of the theatre towards St John Street. (fn. 52) Following further redecoration a few years later, the auditorium had a 'very pleasing appearance; the colours are milk white, pale green and a beautiful pink', which produce 'a cool, delicate effect'. (fn. 53) In 1776 King got permission from the New River Company to put up a low wall and iron railing along the walk opposite his house and the Wells. This, he claimed, was 'not only an ornament' but would 'prevent the rabble from assembly there, throwing in their dogs etc'. (fn. 54) Around this time also a row of poplars was planted along the southern boundary, beside the New River; later they became 'so lofty as to be easily recognized by voyagers from Margate as they came up the Thames' (Ill. 187). (fn. 55) By a further minor alteration, a footbridge over the New River was widened for the carriage trade in June 1780 and rebuilt in brick. (fn. 56)

Substantial alterations were made to Sadler's Wells in 1778 when the 'whole of the inside of the House was taken down and materially improved. The ceiling of the auditorium was raised, allowing improved ventilation and sightlines. (fn. 57) Then in 1787, perhaps in connection with a failed parliamentary bill to license the theatre, further changes were made to the auditorium. The slips (part of the pit, the front part of which we would now call the stalls) were made a continuation of the ground-floor boxes—' 'tis said, to exclude ladies of a volatile description'. (fn. 58)

This altered interior appears in a small print of 1794, the basis of the coloured view reproduced as the frontispiece to this volume. Depicting a typical Sadler's Wells entertainment of a rope-walker on stage, it shows the auditorium in some detail. There is effectively no division between the stage and the pit, allowing the acrobats and their equipment to extend beyond the proscenium arch, perhaps in the manner of the old show-room of Sadler's time. There are a few benches at the rear of the auditorium— the pit— and at the sides what were presumably the new boxes replacing the disreputable slips, railed off with thin balustrading, presumably of iron. This balustrading is also a feature of the first-floor boxes and the open gallery above. There is a stage box on the right side of the proscenium at private-box level (with a mildly suggestive classical statue below).

From 1792 the leaseholder of Sadler's Wells was Richard Hughes, who had managed a number of provincial theatres. He and his partner William Siddons, husband of the famous Sarah, oversaw the continuing improvement in the theatre's social acceptability, welcoming 'a long et cetera of rank and fashion' in their first season as managers. (fn. 59) It was they who successively engaged the brothers Tom and Charles Dibdin as writers in the 1790s, Charles also being manager from 1799. Charles Dibdin produced a mass of popular entertainments— musical bagatelles, historical ballets, comic songs and pantomimes over the next twenty years. But the presentations for which he was best remembered and which had the biggest impact on the physical form of Sadler's Wells were the aquatic dramas.

Dibdin had worked previously for Philip Astley at his Amphitheatre of Arts and Sciences in Lambeth, devising trick scenery for stage illusions and this skill helped reshape Sadler's Wells. By 1801 it was in Dibdin's opinion 'the dirtiest and most antique Theatre in London'. (fn. 60) Siddons had to ask his landlord for a reduction in rent when the lease was renewed in 1802, on the grounds that the business had lost money every year between 1795 and 1801. (fn. 61)

Over the winter of 1801–2 the interior of Sadler's Wells was reconstructed at a cost of about £1,500 by the specialist theatre architect Rudolphe Cabanel. (fn. 62) He had rebuilt a number of theatre interiors, including the Royal Circus in Lambeth, but was presumably known to Dibdin from Astley's where he had devised stage machinery. (fn. 63) By January 1802 Richard Wroughton, who had taken over from King as manager in the late 1770s and still owned a stake in the theatre, was writing to the landlord that 'the Place is completely gutted and a very pretty, handsome Theatre will soon be ready'. (fn. 64) The main alteration was the creation of a semi-circular circle and galleries on the lines of the reconstructions of Drury Lane and Covent Garden in the 1790s, (fn. 65) which gave a more fashionable aspect and better sightlines, also aided by the slender cast-iron columns supporting the circle and galleries, an early example of their use (Ill. 185). The proscenium ends of the gallery and circle had spacious boxes either side, although the dress circle was now no longer composed of boxes, while the gallery was as deep as the circle. Boxes are often referred to in advertisements, but are out of view in most illustrations. Probably these were relatively large boxes (not private boxes intended for one party), located side by side along the back of the auditorium, and considered superior to the undivided pit in front. (fn. 66) Beyond the auditorium little had changed, and there were no proper means of escape, as was demonstrated in 1807, when eighteen people were trampled to death during a false fire alarm. (fn. 67)

During the 1802 season Hughes and Dibdin introduced pony races, which were held from time to time over the next quarter-century (Ill. 186). After a short prelude by Dibdin, large doors at the back of the theatre were opened through the scene house to the yard behind, the yard and stage forming the racecourse. The ponies were supplied by I'ons' livery stable in Islington. (fn. 68)

The aquatic theatre, 1804–1824

By 1805 an extra two-storey scene room had been added, along with a covered way (sometimes referred to as 'the piazza') along the south side of the theatre, between the yard and the entrance to box and pit by the manager's house (Ill. 187). Additional sheds and stables had also been put up. But the most important of Dibdin's improvements was the installation in 1804 of under-stage equipment making possible spectacular dramas culminating in a final scene performed on water.

This was not London's first aquatic theatre. In the years around 1700 Henry Winstanley, designer of the first Eddystone lighthouse, and later his widow Elizabeth, had run a theatre in Piccadilly which combined water effects and fireworks. (fn. 69) What Dibdin and Hughes put on, however, was more ambitious than anything attempted before. Dibdin recalled how they executed the alterations in absolute secrecy: We first ripped up the whole of the stage and removed all traps and cellar work, in all future pantomimes, I was obliged to model my mechanical effects so as to enable the machinists to work the pantomime tricks without any assistance from below which created both for them and me no small perplexity'. (fn. 70)

The vast metal tank, 'made like a brewing vat', (fn. 71) perhaps of rivetted copper, ran the full depth of the stage and some way beyond, under the scene house (Ill. 188). It was 90 ft long and 24 ft across at its widest (presumably at stage front), tapering to just 10 ft at the far end, and about 3 ft deep. It rested on dwarf walls in the cellar 2 ft 4 in high and wide and 2 ft 4 in apart, and contained bearers onto which the stage could be lowered. There were two branches, extending to the side walls of the stage, one about halfway down on the north side, the other nearer the stage end. The tank was originally filled from the New River by means of what Dibdin called an 'archimedean wheel'; later the New River Company was paid £30 per year to fill it from the main, and on one occasion the water was cut off because the bill had not been paid. In 1808 an additional tank was added in the flies to create waterfall effects about 15 ft wide. (fn. 72) These alterations, the proprietors claimed, cost £1,000. (fn. 73)

Between 1804 and 1824, 36 aqua-dramas were staged, almost all up to 1819 written or co-written by Charles Dibdin. (fn. 74) Until 1823, when alterations were made by a Mr Copping to the stage-lifting mechanism which allowed it to rise in a matter of seconds, the audience had to endure an interlude of up to forty minutes as the stage was removed to reveal the water-tanks for the final scenes. (fn. 75) The watery dénouement typically showed a piece of land bordering a body of water— 'Castle on a Lake with a Water Fall', 'Gibralter by the Mediterranian'— and featured ships in full sail (Dibdin employed shipwrights and riggers from Woolwich dockyard to make correct scale-model ships), sea creatures, all propelled around by small boys clad in duffle coats. (fn. 76) Fireworks and other fiery effects— such as burning castles and volcanoes— were popular as they reflected well on the water, and lit up the dim recesses at the back of the stage. (fn. 77) All this heralded a fresh period of prosperity for Sadler's Wells, stoked by the popularity of Joseph Grimaldi, who 'transformed the clown from a rustic booby into the star of metropolitan pantomime'. (fn. 78)

Sadler's Wells in decline, c. 1818–43

Well before the last aquatic shows were held, the theatre was doing badly. The managers claimed to have lost £3,000 in the 1818 season alone, and by the mid-1820s, with Dibdin departed and Grimaldi retired, Sadler's Wells was firmly set on a decline that lasted until Samuel Phelps's arrival in 1843. (fn. 79) A succession of managers made a number of alterations to attract the public, as well as the usual periodic redecoration. Pony races were revived in 1822 with platforms over the orchestra so that the ponies could pass into and round the pit, and in 1826 they were held just in the yard, with boards erected around the perimeter to prevent free viewing. (fn. 80) This revival may have been connected with the building at this time of livery stables just north of the yard, with a building that survives as No. 381 St John Street, now the Sadler's Wells education centre and known as the 'Georgian House' (see Survey of London, volume xlvi).

In the years following the renewal of the lease in 1819, the theatre was given a new roof and the outside walls were stuccoed, perhaps to update its 'old-fashioned, unpretending appearance'. (fn. 81) Over the winter of 1821–2 alterations converted the circle into a series of boxes. Six further boxes were created at the proscenium ends of the gallery, while two more stage boxes were added each side, and the pit and gallery were enlarged. (fn. 82) The theatre was also 'embellished and decorated in a superior style of elegance and splendour … the prevailing colour is a soft and delicate pink'. (fn. 83) The panels on the fronts of the boxes were decorated with gilt lattice work and silvered scallops. The walls of the lobbies were 'relieved with emblematic devices', while the proscenium and stage doors were painted white with gilt beading. Above came 'a fanciful grouping in bronze of the lyre, cornucopia, and other symbolic figures'. The slim iron pillars supporting the boxes were gilded and cut-glass lustres projected from their capitals. The drop curtain was painted with a scene by Thomas Greenwood; it was predominantly blue, as was the 'imitative drapery' of the boxes. (fn. 84)

Probably in 1824, the New River Company leased to T. J. Lloyd Baker the triangular plot of land between the north flank of the theatre and the newly created Arlington Street. Here the Sadler's Wells management built a scene dock and dressing rooms (Ill. 189)— artistes had traditionally been obliged to change beneath the stage, the women in a makeshift 'canvas compartment' nailed to the underside. (fn. 85) Next year, the London Wine Co. having taken a stake in the business, the dwelling house was converted into box office, wine room, saloon and coffee house—a development deprecated by the Lloyd Bakers as one that might interfere with the business of the Sir Hugh Myddelton's Head, on the other side of the New River, of which they were also the freeholders. (fn. 86) It was some time later that a large covered porch of light construction, four columns wide and two deep, surmounted by a sign board towards St John Street, with the name 'Sadler's Wells', was added behind, presumably to shelter those attending the box office or entering the box and pit door (Ill. 190). The covered way of c. 1804 seems to have been removed when this was built.

The 1820s saw intense building activity on the land around Sadler's Wells, and development of part or all of the theatre site for housing and other purposes was mooted many times over the next century and a half. The first proposal seems to have been in 1823 when William Lloyd Baker's solicitor, Augustus Warren, suggested that if the theatre were pulled down, the site, and the triangular plot belonging to the New River Company alongside Arlington Street, could be used for building houses. (fn. 87) In 1826 Richard Hughes junior, the lessee, wrote to Lloyd Baker offering to build ten tenements on the north side of the theatre yard to raise revenue, but the offer was not taken up as the proposed rent was too small. (fn. 88)

In 1828 John Booth, the Lloyd Baker surveyor, or his son William Joseph Booth, drew up a more radical plan to demolish the theatre, and Dibdin's old house at the St John Street end of the yard. In their place were to be built two terraces, one of twelve houses fronting Arlington Street and one of nineteen fronting the New River, the latter reached by a private carriage road along the riverside from St John Street. (fn. 89) Nevertheless, the Booths advised that the theatre was still the most profitable use of the site for the Lloyd Bakers, and nothing was done. In 1830 W. C. Mylne, surveyor to the New River Company, advised the Lloyd Bakers that the best thing for both estates would be demolition of the theatre and redevelopment of the whole site with housing, for building houses alongside the theatre would 'only increase the number of lodging houses and Brothels which cover your Tunbridge Wells property'. As an alternative he suggested that the theatre could be let as a riding school or panorama and 'these itinerant Theatrical corps' compelled 'to quit the spot forever … as it is, nothing could be worse'. (fn. 90)

Thereafter the Wells lurched from one failure to another, as prices and standards gradually sank lower and lower. Superficial changes were made, the saloon being redecorated as a Chinese pavilion in the early 1830s, and the auditorium 'ornamented with emblematical and classical devices'. (fn. 91)

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10. Joseph Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. A new edition much enlarged and corrected by J. Charles Cox, 1903, p.230: Gentleman's Magazine, Dec 1813, pp. 553–5
11. Trans. from François Colsoni, Le Guide de Londres (1693), ed. W. H. Godfrey, 1951, pp.6, 19
12. Michael Tilmouth, 'Some early London concerts and music clubs, 1670–1720', in Journal of the Royal Musical Association, no.84, 1957, pp. 13–26
13. Colsoni, p. 19
14. Richard Ames, Islington Wells; or the Threepenny Academy, 1691
15. Ned Ward, A Walk to Islington with a Description of New Tunbridge Wells and Sadler's Music-house, 1699, pp.12–15
16. BL, Percival Collection, vol 1 passim
17. Mary Cosh, A History of Islington, 2005, p.64, n.16
18. Ned Ward, Weekly Comedy, 24 May 1699, in BL, Percival Collection, vol. 1, p.85: Gentleman's Magazine, Dec 1813, p.558
19. The Inquisitor, June 1711: God's Judgment Against Murderers; or an account of a cruel and barbarous Murther, committed on Thursday night the 14th of August at Sadler's Musick-house, near Islington, 1712: Old Bailey Proceedings T17120910–28
20. BL, Harley MS 5931, advertisement
21. Gentleman's Magazine, Dec 1813, pp.553–8
22. TNA, C/7/299/2
23. GA, D3549, 38/4/1, p.2
24. Ibid: TNA, PROB11/597
25. John Hawkins, History of Music, 1796, vol.4, p.390
26. GL, MS 8674 passim
27. Gentleman's Magazine, Dec 1813, p.560
28. GL, MS 8674/44, p. 233 (policy no. 59754)
29. GL, MS 8674/57, p.67
30. John Noorthouck, A New History of London, 1773, p. 350: David Thomas (ed.), Theatre in Europe: A Documentary History. Restoration and Georgian England, 1660–1788, 1989, p.225
31. GA, D3549, 38/4/1; 38/4/3: Dennis Arundell, The Story of Sadler's Wells, 1683–1977, 1978, p.14
32. GL, MS 8674/57, p.67
33. Martin Holmes, 'The Two Stages at Sadler's Wells', in Theatre Notebook, vol.8, no.3, April—June 1954, pp.62–3
34. Warwick William Wroth and Arthur Edgar Wroth, The London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century, 1896, pp.200,202,302
35. Ibid
36. BL, Percival Collection, vol. 1 passim
37. Gentleman's Magazine, Dec 1813, p.561
38. BL, Percival Collection, vol.1 passim
39. GL, MS 8674/101, p.312
40. GA, D3549, 38/4/1
41. GL, MS 8674/101, p.312 (policy no.83175)
42. The Nic Nac or Literary Cabinet, 12 June 1824, p.218
43. GL, MS 8674/128, p.24; MS 8674/134, p.58; MS 8674/138, p.233; MS 8675/1, p.26
44. Theatre Museum Archive, Sadler's Wells buildings file no. 1, cutting of March 1844
45. BL, Percival Collection, vol.1, p.157, cutting
46. Ibid
47. Arundell, p.27: MDR 1771/5/541: BL, Percival Collection, vol.1 pp. 175–6
48. Arundell, p.27: MDR 1771/5/541
49. BL, Percival Collection, vol. 1, p.175, cutting dated 18 Sept 1771
50. BL, Percival Collection, vol. 1, p. 181
51. GA, D3549, 38/4/3 pt 1, letter of 4 Aug 1775
52. GL, MS 8674/113; MS 8674/128 (policy nos 88127, 83175): BL, Percival Collection, vol.1, p.181, cutting of 13 April 1772
53. BL, Percival Collection, vol. 1, p.192, cutting, n.d. (c. 1775)
54. GA, D3549, 38/4/3 pt, 1, letter from Thomas King, 18 March 1776
55. BL, Percival Collection, vol.1, pp.76–83: NMR, MaysonBeeton Collection, 65B SAD 1840 (sic) S, 'Notes and Queries of Old England: The Dibdins' House, Sadler's Wells'
56. Arundell, p.33
57. Gentleman's Magazine, Dec 1813, p. 562
58. BL, Percival Collection, vol.2, cutting of 21 April 1787
59. Arundell, p.48
60. George Speaight (ed.), Professional and Literary Memoirs of Charles Dibdin the Younger, 1956, pp.17–33, 47
61. GA, D3549, 38/6/4
62. Speaight, p.47
63. ODNB
64. GA, D3549, 38/6/4
65. Survey of London, vol.xxxv, 1970, p. 50
66. Richard Leacroft, The Development of the English Playhouse, 1984
67. Arundell, pp.80–1
68. Speaight, p.48
69. BL, Harley MS 5931, collection of theatrical ephemera: ODNB
70. Speaight, p. 59
71. Ibid
72. Speaight, pp.60–3: Allan S. Jackson and John Morrow, 'Aqua Scenes at Sadler's Wells Theatre 1804–1824, in Ohio State University Theatre Collection Bulletin, no.9, 1962, pp.22–38: Ward, p.206
73. Speaight, p.60, n.2
74. Jackson and Morrow, op.et loc.cit.
75. Speaight, p.60, n.1: Jackson and Morrow, p.36
76. Jackson and Morrow, op.cit.
77. Ibid, pp.28–34
78. ODNB
79. GA, D3549, 38/6/2, pt 1
80. Arundell, pp.101, 105
81. GA, D3549, 38/4/6; 38/6/10: Cromwell, p. 379: British Stage, vol.5, no.55, July 1821, p.215
82. BL, Percival Collection, vol. 1, ff. 76–82
83. Ibid
84. Ibid
85. GA, D3549, 38/6/2, pt 5: LMA, Acc/1953/C/771: Speaight, p. 104
86. GA, D3549, 38/6/10: Arundell, p.102
87. GA, D3549, 38/6/2, pt 4
88. Ibid, 38/6/9
89. Ibid, 38/6/10; 38/3/2
90. Arundell, p. 114: GA, D3549, 38/6/3, pt 11
91. BL, Th.Cts. 49, newspaper cutting of 24 April 1832: Arundell, p.118