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New Zealand Times, 12 September 1907, Page 7

END OF EXETER HALL.

• 1 (Prom Our Own Correspondent!) ! LONDON, July 26. Exeter Hall, famous as the headquarters of the Y.M.C.A., the home of foreign missions, the centre of the annual “May meetings,-" the mouth-piece of religious fervour—Exeter Hall fias passed under* the auctioneer's hammer. The took over the building in 18al, and have used it over since; but now, rather- than carry out the very costly alterations required by the County Council, the association has sold for £25,100 the remainder of the Crown lease years) to. Mr Lyons, on condition that no licensed premises, theatre, or music-hall shall be ‘placed on the site. The association is about to erect in Tottenham .Court road a new building for itself, and, in the meanwhile, is occupying a .part of the new “Morning Post" building in the Strand. Exeter Hall was built in 1831, “for the purpose of accommodating the members of the religious, benevolent and scientific societies and institutions connected with the metropolis/"' It stands on the site of the older Exeter 'Change, which in the early part of the nineteenth century was occupied largely by a menagerie, It was at Exeter Hall that the Earl of Shaftesbury presided over, the first meeting of the Bagged School Union, and it was hero, too, that the Prince Consort mad© his first public appearance in England, presiding over the annual meeting of the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and for the Civilisation of Africa. For many years Exeter Hall was a home ofi choral music ae the headquarters of the' Sacred Harmonic Society, and Mendelssohn played on the organ there in, 1842, and five years later conducted there the society's performance of his Elijah." Amongst the scientists who have lectured at Exeter Hall havo been Richard Owen, Hugh Miller, and Pay Lankester. Temperance has been advocated from its platform by such famous speakers as Cardinal Manning, Archbishop Temple, and John B, Gough. The Church Missionary Society has met there every year, as also havo the Religious Tract Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and a host of lesser religious organisations. The i "May Meetings," held in April. May, and June, numbered 97 in 1881; in recent years their, number has risen to about 415; and twenty-two meetings have been accommodated in the various halls of the building on a - single day. For the last ten years the number of persons forming the *May Meeting audience may be es-. timated at 250,000 annually. But to longer will the walls. of Exeter r 4 all ring with 'denunciations of Britain's treatment of the gentle savage, Curates and sweet old ladies gave place this week to rude men with pipes in their mouths and catalogues in hand, whose mission was not to sell I ..rets but to buy up furniture and fitrwr.g*. All the contents of the building are being sold, with the exception of the airman's chair, in which so may famous men have sat, the platform rail in front of the chair, and the pewter olares-in which many hundred thousands of pounds have been taken up in collections.