Deacon's Music Hall

Deacon’s was a music hall attached to the Sir Hugh Myddelton Tavern. The pub had been rebuilt in 1831 on the site of a tavern (Myddelton’s Head, built in 1631) which itself had a ‘long room’ by 1765 at latest. The old house stood nearly opposite Sadler’s Wells, across the New River, and had a tea garden which was a popular resort for Londoners walking to the fields north of the town before Islington developed.

The 1831 pub had two rooms which, by 1837, were proto-music hall singing rooms. The smaller, the Old Crib, was rather of the nature of a private club but the Long Room was public. In 1859 James Deacon gave notice of the erection of seven cottages on the pub garden but this project seems to have been overtaken by the decision to build a music hall. This proved popular and in 1884 John William Deacon (son of James) enlarged the hall to cover all the available land.

The licence was not renewed in 1891 and the hall was soon after demolished to make way for a new highway, Rosebery Avenue, built over the New River and absorbing the avenue in which Deacon’s stood.

The plans of 1884 show clearly how the hall had been enlarged by an addition on one side, giving it a deep (and steep) balcony on stage left, facing the narrow, single-bench balcony on stage right.

In most respects this, despite its asymmetrical plan, was a classic grand music hall with rows of supper tables and generous promenade areas, served directly by bars, including the converted Long Room and Old Crib. The stage was, however, an interesting hybrid between the earlier forms of open concert platforms and the emerging proscenium stages of the later halls. There was a thin wood proscenium with a painted architectural frame, a tumbled drop and drapes, but the singer stood well forward, the footlights being a good ten feet in advance of the frame.

If Deacon’s had not fallen to a road improvement it would probably have been replaced by a variety theatre, offering a direct threat to Sadler’s Wells.