Sun Music Hall

The Rising Sun tavern probably held a music licence before 1851 but, in that year, it joined the prevailing trend for the building of concert rooms over the ground at the rear of pubs. Rebuilt by Finch Hill & Paraire in December 1866, it conformed to the earliest music hall pattern in being a long supper room with a balcony on three sides and an open platform concert stage entered from an upstage central archway. On either side of the stage, but not apparently linked to it, were two private boxes. No interior views have yet been seen, but contemporary reports compared it to Weston's in Holborn. The hall was reached directly by way of a stone-paved passageway from Knightsbridge and from the restaurant at the rear of the pub.

In 1882 it was reported that the stage had been given a proscenium and a drop curtain. This may have been a flimsy alteration, since a plan some seven years later shows the stage and hall as described in 1866, with the exception that the central entrance had been closed so that entries were made from the sides.

In 1885 the pub was demolished. The hall closed and was linked to the Humphrey's Hall (q.v.) complex adjoining, becoming a Japanese theatre to operate with the Japanese Village exhibition there. It reopened as a music hall in 1887 and saw the Great Vance dying from a heart attack at the end of his performance, the following year.

Ceasing to be used for entertainment in 1890, the hall went through a variety of non-performance uses. It was one of the very few supper room halls to survive in more or less recognisable form into the mid-twentieth century, but the loss of such a vital piece of evidence passed unnoticed in the post-war years.