Comments on: David Mason, Wilton’s Music Hall

By: John Jessop

John Jessop — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 17:58:27 +0000

David.
Apologies for the belated response to your Aug4, 2023 posting. Looking at your photographs I thought you looked familiar. Memory does play tricks, but I have a clear recollection of at least one Somali-owned bar in Grace’s Alley while we lived there. There was a bar called Rio on the corner of Ensign Street. A young Somali man named , if memory serves, Mohamed Warsama, used to hang about there. He was a lovely lad, big for his age, and went to St Paul’s School. One day, he extracted one of the railings and wielded it to deter some local kids who had been goading him. My Dad broke up what might have been an unpleasant incident. I went to Raine’s School in Arbor Square, just off the Commercial Road. Not my happiest experience. I read recently that the school has been shut down. I wonder if you remember a football tournament in St Paul’s playground (though it was just a dirt patch) organized by William Balls who lived in the alley on the south-west corner, the name of which I’ve forgotten. His son Billy played in goal for my team, with disastrous but hilarious results. Wellclose Square doesn’t look much as I remember it (I recently took a walking tour there) but the school still looks the same – and Wilton’s has been revealed and restored since I lived there. I’d be happy to hear from you, as I’m writing a memoir. My email address is posted. Best JJ

By: David Mason

David Mason — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 18:11:57 +0000

I don’t Know if John Jessop, will remember me we used to play together in the caretakers garden of St. Pauls school, My Mum was also a dinner Lady. My family lived in The Old Mahogany Bar -The Methodist Mission. In the 1950’s their was only one family living in those premisses No. 3, Graces Alley, “Wiltons Music Hall” or The Methodist Mission, at the time and that was my family. there definitely were No other families what so ever Somalis or otherwise during the time my family occupied the premisses, we moved out in approx. 1959/60, what happened when we moved out is anybody’s guess.
it was generally know within the Genuine Local Community at the time that The Methodist Mission had been used at one time as a Music Hall, In fact the Youth club actually put on a Music Hall Show on one occasion; but I keep on hearing that nobody knew a music Hall was there! Until it was “discovered” by the GLC, which is total rubbish Colin Sorensen was shown around and brought his students to the Music Hall to do Drawings etc.

By: Dawn Knox

Dawn Knox — Sun, 07 Jul 2019 20:25:39 +0000

My dad had such wonderful memories of Wiltons as the Old Mahogany Bar just before and during WWII when he was a teenager. He played table tennis for the Methodist youth club there and got to the finals which he played in the Albert Hall.

By: Gregory Hubbard

Gregory Hubbard — Sun, 20 May 2018 19:38:04 +0000

It is a miracle that this theater has survived after so many threats – casual demolition, and do not forget the blitz, which destroyed architectural treasures all over this neighborhood and all over London.

It is lovely that so many people have worked so hard to save this remarkable survival.

By: Red&BlackManThinks

Red&BlackManThinks — Mon, 29 May 2017 19:25:06 +0000

Very fond of Wilton`s so this piece answers many questions. Fascinating.

By: Carol Hinchliff

Carol Hinchliff — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 22:27:40 +0000

What a thrill to read your articles and all the replies. My 4th great grandmother was Ellen Hall – John Wilton’s wife and business partner. I am so excited to read all about this wonderful place and the history tha surrounds it, and can’t wait to set foot in it one day. I live in Canada now – so it will be awhile. Thank you so much.

By: Sharon Bird

Sharon Bird — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 18:06:24 +0000

My father Tony Hunt used to work for the Jewish Waste cloth firm called I & J Hymans Ltd who used to store their rags in Wiltons Music hall and he used to collect the rags to be delivered from there.

By: John Jessop

John Jessop — Sun, 16 Aug 2015 13:21:21 +0000

I lived in St. Paul’s School, where my father Herbert Jessop was the caretaker, in the mid 1950s. The headmaster was Mr. Hubert Ilett. He had been the choirmaster at St. Augustine’s church in Bickley, Kent, where my father was a parishioner. That’s how he got the job, having previously worked for Southern Railway (Region). My mother Gwen was ‘dinner lady’. Dinners, actually lunches, were delivered, pre-cooked, in containers. Father Joe Williamson, usually known as Father Joe, or Holy Joe, was then the parish priest, one of the East End’s more colourful characters. He had for a time a Nigerian curate, Sam Johnson, who was one of the nicest and most handsome men I’d ever met, but a very ‘dirty’ footballer, as I found out in the kick-abouts on the school playground (actually a dirt patch in those days. I often wonder what became of him. I think he went back to Africa. Grace’s Alley, in the northwest corner of the square, was then a row of shabby flats, with bars on the ground floor, most of them Somali. Wilton’s music hall wasn’t rediscovered until after we’d moved away. A dreadful place in some respects, but always interesting and often fun.

By: Chaim Freedman

Chaim Freedman — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 05:58:00 +0000

My father, John Freedman grew up at 27 Well Street (now Ensign Street) between 1910 and 1921 when he emigrated with his parents to Australia. His father was in the army throughout the First World War and I have papers with the Well Street address. I visited there with my father in 1970 when some of the old buildings still existed. In 2003 my next visit it was nearly all gone.
My father died in Melbourne 1999 aged 90 and I would have loved to have shown him what is happening now.
I wonder if there are any photos of Well Street from the my father’s time.

By: Steve Wright

Steve Wright — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 12:57:16 +0000

Thanks for publishing this piece and for the social history.

My family lived at no 4 Graces Alley and I found it fascinating to visit Wiltons and see some of the rooms above the shops that they lived in. We had 8 Wrights living there in 1854. They subsequently moved on to John Fisher Street (Peabody Estate) until the blitz took the building down in September 1940.

Please keep up the good work, I am looking forward to the next phase of refurbishment to the shop properties and the next 100 years of history yet to come.