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Things you probably didn’t know about Bristol Beacon
The £132m renovation of Bristol Beacon may have faced enormous challenges on the way, but it also revealed some fascinating discoveries around the building’s history.
As the music hall opens its doors to the public again on Thursday, here is a look back at its history, from its inception as a liberal counter to Bristol’s ‘Tory’ Victoria Rooms, to its historic masonry and eclectic mix of guests.
For the last three years, a team of researchers at Bristol Beacon has been on a mission to reinvestigate the history of the 156-year-old venue.
is needed now More than ever
Bristol-based creator and producer, Cathy Mager, has led the project. As a deaf person and activist for disabled people, she has aimed to give insight into art creation and its audiences that are otherwise represented.
The project’s findings will be revealed in a 12-metre-long frieze when the building opens, created for the restored Lantern Hall, taking visitors on a journey from 1867 all the way to 2023.
Workers found pillars in the Lantern Hall to be hollow during construction, leading them to believe each pillar acted as a furnace in part of a wider Victorian central heating network that supplied the building with warmth.
Construction workers have now filled in the original Victorian furnaces that acted as a central heating system for the building – photo: Martin Booth
Under the new renovations, Bristol Beacon has maintained its ‘crush room’ where, in the Edwardian period, audiences would promenade or converse during the theatre emissions or while they waited for their carriages at the end of the evening.
It was supposedly named the crush room due to being invariably crowded, forcing everyone together. It was also usually the most beautiful and sumptuously decorated room in the entire building.
We should bring back the crush room today – photo: Mia Vines Booth
Queen Elizabeth stayed in the building in 1574, when it was a mansion called the Great House, built in 1568 by Sir John Young. When constructors began renovations of the cellar, they found four Elizabethan wells in the building that Elizabeth may have used during her stay.
On May 1, 1909, Suffragettes Vera Holme and Elsie Hower hid in the grand pipe of the Beacon Hall’s world famous organ, and interrupted a political speech by Augustine Birrell, Bristol North MP, President of the Board of Education and vocal anti-suffragette at the time.
On March 28, 1934, 6,000 people demonstrated outside a talk by the British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley, with some BUF members injured.
At the height of the 1950s, Bristol Beacon would hold regular wrestling matches. By the end of the decade, demand for matches was so strong that seats were block-booked one day to the next.
American Olympic wrestler and film actor, Harold Sakata, made several appearances at the venue before appearing in James Bond film, Gold Finger, in 1964. The final wrestling show was held in December 2003.
The building has been rebuilt three times since its inception as a public hall in 1867, firstly on September 1 1889, when a fire broke out, spreading from a clothing factory next door and destroying the main hall in what was at the time, said to be the biggest fire Bristol had seen since the 1831 riots.
The aftermath of the 1898 fire, when the main hall’s organ was destroyed along with its roof – photo: Bristol Archives
Then on February 5, 1954, another fire broke out, destroying the main hall again. It is thought to have started from a cigarette discarded during a dance band show by Carroll Gibbons. It was only reopened six years later due to post-war shortages.
St John’s Conduit, a key water supply that once served the old walled city of Bristol. The supply began at Brandon Hill, through pipes down Park Street and was conveyed by a feather pipe from the Carmelite Priory cistern on what is now the site of Bristol Beacon.
St John’s Conduit ran through the Bristol Beacon – photo: Martin Booth
Its latest renovation is its most recent, when all three concert halls: Beacon Hall, Lantern Hall and Weston Stage, were closed in 2017 to be rebuilt for the grant opening on Thursday.
Bristol Beacon changed its name in 2020 after a series of Black Lives Matter protests and a wider reckoning with Bristol’s involvement in the transatlantic trade of enslaved people led to a city-wide call to change the name from Colston Hall.
Cathy Mager’s team found that the venue’s name change was actually the topic of conversation from as far back as the 1890s.
The team found quotes relating to an anti-slavery meeting in the Lantern in the 1890s, in which they called out the country’s inability to address slavery even after its abolition. The hall played host to anti-slavery songs in the 1800s and later to Paul Robeson, a hugely important civil rights activist.
Bristol Beacon officially changed its name in June 2020 – photo: Martin Booth
The name was chosen because, in the words of London and Hong Kong-based branding agency, Saboteur: “It describes a focal point, a gathering place and source of inspiration – a place that will be visible beyond the boundaries of the city – which everyone involved in the project fully encapsulated what this venue means for the city, and set music free.”
Main photo: Bristol Beacon
Read next:
- Amazing discoveries made during Colston Hall refurbishment
- New photos of Bristol Beacon transformation revealed
- Bristol Beacon: ‘A venue for everyone in the city’
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