Wilton’s Music Hall – The good old days

John Major is half way through a book about the rise and fall of the music hall. His father, Tom, was a song-and-dance man who formed a double act with his wife, Kitty. John’s brother Terry was a trapeze artist, and the former prime minister must have come close to going into the family trade. Parliament’s gain was, in John Major-speak, showbiz’s not inconsiderable loss. Oh, yes.  

Tom Major was a name in his day, although the fag-end of the music hall he knew is deader now than even the madrigal. The generation of halls that emerged in 1850 were very rapidly gone. Only one survives, in the East End of London, off Cable Street in Stepney.  

John Wilton originally bought a terrace of five Georgian houses and a pub so that he could use the land at the back to build his music hall. That complex of houses, the pub (known worldwide by sailors as the Mahogany Bar) and the hall behind still stand — just.