ABOVE A STREAM

Evening Star, Issue 20780, 30 April 1931, Page 2

ABOVE A STREAM

FAMOUS HALL’S SECRETS The Albert Hall, or rather the Royal Albert Hall, for it has earned that prefix of distinction, kept its diamond jubilee recently. To commemorate those sixty years perhaps someone will place a tablet over the entrance. Matter .for the inscription would not be lacking. “This hall was opened by Queen Victoria. Wagner, Verdi, and Gounod conducted here; Patti sang here, and Paderewski played.” That would be striking enough, but now many more illustrious names could be added, says the ‘ Daily Mail.’ Few people know that this great pile was built by a soldier, but so it was. The architect was a sapper, Colonel Scott, who had to bring some modicum .ofll.E. capacity for traversing streams to his task. in fact, a stream was found flowing across the chosen site of the hall, and there it flows to this day, safely restrained but never to be quenched. it will probably surprise dancers at the annual balls to learn .that this stream runs below the arena and only 2ft from the bed of the hall. Raise a trail door and there it is, hasting along at the rate of nine gallons a minute to the Thames. It is not used for any purpose, since it is very hard water.

Still more oddly, it flows across a deep well, being piped for this transit. This well also is no longer used, though it was at the beginning of the hall’s career. The present secretary, Mr Askew, tested its depth to about 140 ft.

The hall is full of surprises of this sort. It has, or claims to have, the oldest lift in London, which celebrates its diamond jubilee in. company with the walls Officials of the hall speak admiringly of this lift, as if it were an honoured and veteran hand.

“ That’s a lift for you,” says one of them, “good as ever, carrying its fifteen men, never out of order. It’s had a new rope at intervals, and had its bit of greasing regularly and it is sixty years old.” This faithful lift is hydraulic.

It will help you on your way to see the theatre. Off one of tip corridors of the higher tiers is a little theatre. It used to be a gallant little place in Victorian days, devoted to amateur societies, and its walls were covered with gold paper. But it fell out of use during the war, and as it has only one exit tie L.C.C., which always seems to be thinking of the requirements of dissatisfied audiences, banned its employ unless it were reconditioned.

However, it is still useful for the students or a school of dramatic art and voice training, one of the extensions of London University, who. curiously enough when I watched, wove being taught to vary their entrances and to have more than one mode of exit, too.

The hall contains its own printing works, its own painter’s shop, i<s own carpenter’s, ami has its forge somewhere in the basement with its own anvil. There are lfi,9S?o square feet of floor packed away in the passages, in docketed piles, and the floor, which is used, of course, for the Arts Club and other balls, is put into position in twenty-four hours.

It. is dismantles! and stoVod away in half that time into the lower passages, mostly round the collars—where SCO to 1,000 dozen of beer are habitually stored, and any Scotsman’s requirements in whisky may also bo mot at once.