Kingsway Hall

The Kingsway Hall, Holborn, London, built in 1912, was the home of the West London Mission of the Methodist Church, and eventually became one of the most important recording venues for classical music and film music. Among the prominent Methodists associated with the Kingsway Hall was Donald Soper, who was Superintendent Minister at the West London Mission from 1936 until his retirement in 1978.

Overview

Kingsway Hall took its name from the street on to which its main entrance opened. The address was West London Mission, 75 Kingsway, London WC2.

In 1899, the London Council was given the power to proceed with major slum clearance in the area between Holburn and the Strand. The Methodist Church, which had operated the West London Mission from 1887, had land with a chapel on it, and decided to construct a new building. The Wesleyan Chapel at 67 Great Queen Street was renamed as Kingsway Hall April 1907, but that building was also condemned by the London Council as part of the clearance.

A new seven-story building called Wesley House was home to the West London Mission until 1972 when it merged with the Hinde Street Methodist Chapel (a merger not completed until 1982). Wesley House included a youth club, religious meeting rooms, a luncheon club, mission offices, and accommodation for resident staff. Adjacent to Wesley House and with a frontage on to Kingsway the Church also speculated by building the International Buildings which was let to many tenants and was a source of much needed revenue to run the mission. The mission was inaugurated at Wesley House on December 6, 1911 but Kingsway Hall within Wesley House required another year of construction. Although Kingsway Hall itself has been demolished, Wesley House remains today, no longer a mission, as does the International Buildings.

Foundation stones for Kingsway Hall were laid April 24, 1912 and the hall was completed with a ceremony on December 6, 1912. The hall included a raked floor with over 2,000 seats.

The organ, built in 1912 by J. J. Binns of Leeds, was inaugurated April 4, 1913. A fourth manual was added to in 1924 by Messrs. Hill & Son and Norman & Beard, along with chimes and timpani. The opening of the new organ was performed by Gatty Sellars, the hall’s organist at the time. The organ was rebuilt in 1932 and remained in use until the closure of the hall. The Nigerian composer Fela Sowande was the organist of the hall from 1945.

At the end of March 1983 the Greater London Council purchased Wesley House and Kingsway Hall for the women’s committee. Kingsway Hall was rapidly deteriorating, and an archaeological survey in August 1996 found nothing significant about Kingsway Hall was left. Despite pleas from some musicians and record magazines, Kingsway was demolished in 1998 to make way for a hotel of the same name, which opened in 2000. The hotel’s reception desk is on the approximate location where orchestra members once recorded.

Recording at Kingsway Hall 1926-1984

Kingsway was built for evangelical purposes, as a place of worship, not as a concert or recording hall. However, it was considered to have the finest recording acoustic in London for orchestra and chorus. The outstanding acoustics were more of an accident than a design. The size and shape of the chamber, the plastered walls, wooden floor and seating all contributed as did the large storage chamber below the hall. . Musicians were enthusiastic to perform there since the hall offered excellent feedback. They also found the hall difficult since it lacked parking, was cold in the winter, was dingy and dirty, and lacked food services. For recording engineers, there was also continual rumbling from the London Underground line interrupting recordings. Directly below Great Queen Street is the main line of the Underground Piccadilly Line which opened on 15th December 1906, and under Kingsway was a branch, the rail extension from Holborn to Aldwych which opened November 13, 1907 and closed 1994. The sound of the underground could be heard on many recordings, and became known as the “Kingsway rumble”. There were also recording problems created by road and construction noise, and even occasional interruptions from the clientele of the mission itself. Engineers complained that takes made with outside traffic noise could not be edited together with those made while traffic stopped for a red light.

Despite the drawbacks, because of its central location and excellent acoustics, Kingsway became the most sought after recording venue for orchestral music in England, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s when companies were replacing their monaural with stereophonic recordings. The London Symphony Orchestra alone made 421 recordings between 1926-1983. The London Philharmonic Orchestra made 280 recordings there, including its very first sessions (with Malcolm Sargent conducting choral favorites).

The hall included room for operatic and choral recordings, and there was also the usable organ. Since the stage was not large enough for an orchestra or chorus, the metal ground floor seating was removed for recordings. The conductor often faced the horseshoe balcony, giving that individual an unusual prospect of looking at the orchestra dropping down rapidly due to the five percent raked floor.

EMI began recording at Kingsway Hall on December 31, 1925; Decca Records began recording at Kingsway Hall in May 1944. EMI had its own recording complex at Abbey Road Studios, but Kingsway would become one of the three most used Decca recording locations (the others being Victoria Hall in Geneva, and the Sofiensaal in Vienna). Lyrita used Kingsway from 1965-1980 (these recordings were actually produced by Decca’s recording team) and RCA Records from 1957-1977. Although primarily used for classical music recording very occasionally dance bands and the like were recorded there including Sydney Lipton in the thirties and Ted Heath in the summer of 1958. EMI rarely used the venue for chamber music but Decca recorded solo keyboard, violin sonatas and string quartets.

EMI and Decca had opportunities to purchase Kingsway Hall. EMI determined that although Kingsway Hall was one of the best recording locations in the world, refurbishment would be too expensive. Decca and EMI’s recording contracts at Kingsway expired December 31, 1983. The final recording, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli, was made with Deutsche Grammophon a few days later: Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" which finished taping on January 5, 1984.

Events at Kingsway Hall

*August 1913 – Emmeline Pankhurst delivers speech at Women's Social and Political Union meeting condemning doctors’ force feeding of women caught under the Cat and Mouse Act
*October 16, 1919 - The British Symphony Orchestra’s first concert, Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 and Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 conducted by Adrian Boult
*September 15, 1926 - First recordings with Albert Coates’ "The Symphony Orchestra" (this orchestra composed of London Symphony Orchestra players billed differently for contractual purposes)
*October 28, 1928 – Debate titled "Do We Agree?" over distributism between George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton chaired by Hilaire Belloc and broadcast live by the BBC (audience exceeds hall's capacity)
* June 4, 1931 – Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and the Queen Mother), and Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth) attend recording session for Edward Elgar’s Nursery Suite, with the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra (also recorded at Kingsway on May 23, 1931)
* September 19, 1932 - first London Philharmonic Orchestra sessions
* December 1933 – Anthony Eden speech on the League of Nations
* August 10, 1945 - first Philharmonia Orchestra sessions
* October 27, 1945 – Thomas Beecham conducts the first concert of the Philharmonia Orchestra (an all Mozart program)
* January 20, 1947 - first concert of the London Symphonic Players, Harry Blech conducting
* May 27, 1947 - first Royal Philharmonic Orchestra sessions
* November 28, 1949 – Winston Churchill delivers speech championing the European Movement
* April 16, 1951 - first London performance of the Hindemith Horn Concerto with Dennis Brain and the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Norman Del Mar
* February 7, 1955 – EMI's first stereo recordings made; Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7, Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Nicolai Malko).
* January 19, 1969 (sic) - a large section of the main roof collapses and steel girders fall on the seats (fortunately after Sunday services). This date is that given in Bagwell's history of the WLM published in 1987 for the centenary. Unfortunately Bagwell's information must be incorrect and other evidence at EMI archives and in the Academy of St Martins in the Fields discography points to early September 1969 for the roof fall. Also, the LSO had sessions in the hall 20 and 22 January.
* June 24, 1980 – Celebration for the life of record producer John Culshaw with Nigel Black, Clifford Curzon, Kenneth Sillito, Neil Black, Alan Civil, Georg Solti, Humphrey Burton, Lorin Maazel, Huw Weldon, and Leontyne Price.

References

Unfortunately, there is no published history of Kingsway Hall.

*Bagwell, P S, 1987, “Outcast London – The Christian Response”, Epworth, London, ISBN 0 7162 0435 5
*Chesterton, G.K. (1989) Collected Works vol. 11. San Francisco, Ignatius Press.
*Dixon, George. “The Albert Hall Organ”, Musical Times, September 1, 1924, page 835 on the Kingsway organ additions.
*Drury, Gordon. “A Musical Mission”. Classic Record Collector Spring 2004 pages 46-53.
*Drury, Gordon. “Heyday of Kingsway”. Classic Record Collector Summer 2004 pages 36-42.
*Drury, Gordon. “Kingsway Diminuendo”. Classic Record Collector Autumn 2004 pages 42-47.
*Gray, Michael. (1979) Beecham A Centenary Discography. New York, Holmes & Meier.
*Pettitt, Stephen J. (1987) Philharmonia Orchestra Complete Discography. London, John Hunt.
*Stuart, Philip (1997) The London Philharmonic Discography. Westport, Conn., Greenwood.
*Stuart, Philip (2006) The LSO Discography [http://lso.co.uk/downloadables/lumps/upload/492-88.pdf]
*West London Methodist Mission v Holborn Borough Council. Court of Appeals of England (1958) 3 RRC 86Photos of Kingsway Hall [http://www.bernardherrmann.org/articles/phototours/london/page3.xdoc]