St. James Assembly Rooms

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Venue Type & Location

Concert Hall

Site Name: St. James Assembly Rooms
Location: London
County: London (city-county)
Location Type: Town - in town at determined location

Overview

  • Address: 50 St. James's Street, West Side. For a current map, Click Here.


  • Alternate Names: previously called Crockford's; later became the Wellington Dining Rooms/Wellington Hotel.


  • Performance Space Description: Information about this venue has not yet been compiled; however, some sense of the performance space may be gleaned by following the links at right. In particular:


  • See the 'Bibliographic Sources' link for a provisional list of venue-relevant resources (both primary and secondary). Wherever possible (i.e. when the pertinent text is relatively short and/or easily condensed) this material has been transcribed, and appears beneath the appropriate bibliographic citation.


  • See the 'Events at venue' link for a listing of blackface/minstrelsy-related events that took place in this performance space (with attached bibliographic references).


    Beth Marquis

  • Troupes at St. James Assembly Rooms

    Troupe Troupe Type # of events
    Female American Serenaders Minstrel 4

    Events at St. James Assembly Rooms

    Event Date Venue Location Troupe
    Minstrel Show 21 April 1847 - 24 April 1847 London, London (city-county) Female American Serenaders
    Minstrel Show 26 April 1847 - 1 May 1847 London, London (city-county) Female American Serenaders
    Minstrel Show 3 May 1847 - 8 May 1847 London, London (city-county) Female American Serenaders
    Minstrel Show 31 May 1847 - 5 June 1847 London, London (city-county) Female American Serenaders

    Bibliographic Sources

    • Dictionary of Victorian London Online. 07/27/2008 (http://www.victorianlondon.org/)

      (Under Entertainment - Clubs - Crockford's)

    • Elmes, James. Metropolitan Improvements; or London in the Nineteenth Century. London: Jones & Co., 1828.




      ”CROCKFORD'S CLUB HOUSE, ST JAMES'S STREET. This building, of great extent and expensive execution, is from the designs of Messrs. Benjamin and Philip Wyatt, and does great credit to their well known name. It consists of a lofty ground story, lighted by five spacious Venetian windows. and a magnificent upper or principal story. with an equal number of French casement windows decorated with proper entablatures. The two outermost of these upper windows, being without the pale and protection of the central projecting part, have the additional embellishment of pediments. […]


      The entrance is by way of the lower central window, up a flight of stone steps to the elevated ground floor, under which is a lofty, airy, and extensive basement story, containing the kitchen and other offices and domestic apartments. This story is lighted by a wide area, which is separated from the street by an elegant stone balustrade. On the pedestals of this balustrade are raised a series of bronzed tripods, that support as many elegant octagonal lanterns.


      The front is composed of a centre, formed by a slightly projecting tetrastyle portico of Corinthian pilasters or antæ, which support an entablature and two slightly receding wings in which the epistylium is properly omitted, being supplied by the wall itself. On the upper part of the cornice is a raised blocking course, with a lofty balustrade, and piers over each pilaster, as well as beneath them.


      In the order of which this elevation is composed, the brother architects have followed the heresy of Mr. Nash by giving an Ionic entablature strictly so in every respect, to Corinthian pilasters; or vice versa have given Corinthian pilasters to an Ionic entablature, instead of the rigid orthodoxy of their father, whose beautiful façade (Brookes’ Club House) just below this, stands in awful rivalry of their defection from the true faith. Yet it is a pleasing, and from its magnitude a grand composition; and the interior, which is finished in all the rich and gaudy style of Louis XIV., is a fine specimen of that overloaded but magnificent style of domestic architecture” (140-1).
    • Observer (London) April 25, 1847: 1.
    • Timbs, John. Curiosities of London (1868). London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1868.




      “CROCKFORD'S CLUB-HOUSE, 50, west side of St James's-street, was built for Crockford in 1827; B. and P. Wyatt, architect. It consists of two wings and a centre, with four Corinthian pilasters with entablature, and a balustrade throughout; the ground floor has Venetian windows, and the upper story large French windows. The entrance hall has a screen of Roman-Ionic scagliola columns with gilt capitals, and a cupola of gilding and stained glass. The coffee-room and library have Ionic columns, from the Temple of Minerva Polias; the staircase is panelled with scagliola, and enriched with Corinthian columns. The grand drawing-room is in the style of Louis Quatorze: azure ground, with elaborate cove, ceiling enrichments bronze-gilt, doorway paintings à la Watteau; and panelling, masks, and terminals heavily gilt. The interior was redecorated in 1849, and opened for the Military, Naval, and County Service Club, but was closed in 1851. It is now ‘the Wellington’ Dining-rooms” (246).