Wilton's Music Hall The Hairy Builder

Want to know about British history? You'd better get your hands dirty!

Don't bury your head in a guidebook.

Ask a brickie, a chippie or a roofer.

Ever since I were a boy, I've had a passion for our past.

So I'm going to apprentice myself to the oldest masonry company

in the country, mastering their crafts and scraping away the secrets

of Blighty's poshest piles.

From castles to cathedrals, music halls to mansions,

palaces to public schools -

these aren't just buildings,

they're keys to opening up our past and bringing it back to life.

Today, I'm in the buzzing East End of London,

where a slightly different type of restoration has been taking place

at the fantastically vibrant Wilton's Music Hall.

I take to the stage...

# There's an old mill by the stream, Nelly Dean! #

..help the builders in their final hours...

Can I do the last nail at Wilton's?

..and I'm rolling out the barrels

for a modern-day music hall knees-up.

ALL: # He'll get by without his rabbit pie

# So run, rabbit, run, rabbit Run, run, run! #

This is Whitechapel in London's East End,

an area with a once-seedy reputation.

Ever since the 16th century,

Whitechapel has been regarded as one of the diciest districts

in the East End of London. It was a perfect place for outlaws!

On its doorstep were the London Docks, brewing up a heady mix

of drunken sailors and travellers from all over the Empire.

And, during the Victorian times,

this was also the stomping ground of the likes of Jack the Ripper.

It's been the district where anything goes

and that includes the racy, raucous phenomenon

that was the Victorian music hall!

And Wilton's, here, is one of the last left standing.

In the 1870s, there were over 300 music halls in London alone.

Wilton's itself is a rather higgledy-piggledy building.

It was originally a popular pub

dating back to the early 18th century.

John Wilton bought the business in 1850,

extending it into three neighbouring houses and adding a music hall

at the back, turning it into one of London's top spots -

but not necessarily for the meek and mild.

Wilton had the theatre for just under 20 years,

but he definitely left his mark

and it remains one of the few surviving music halls of its time.

Now, for the last year,

this remarkable building has been brought into the 21st century,

but not by having a complete refurbishment.

No, no, no!

This was a project with a difference...

..as the owners, the Wilton's Music Hall Trust, needed to spend

£2 million, but make it look like the builders had never been.

It's wonderful, it's ethereal, it's mysterious

and it's the most wonderful acoustics as well.

When you look at the stage and you wonder, who's been on there?

With the stage at my feet, before I meet the builders,

I feel slightly obliged to give it a practice run.

Maestro!

# There's an old mill by the stream, Nelly Dean!

# Sweet Nelly Dean. #

I went to the doctor's the other day.

I said, "Doctor, doctor, I keep singing

"The Green, Green Grass Of Home." The doctor said, "Oh, really?

"Really, really? I think you have Tom Jones Syndrome."

I said, "Is that rare?"

He said, "It's not unusual!"

Thank you and good night.

Thank you, thank you!

Ah, well. The old ones are the best.

On with the task in hand.

In charge of this slightly unusual project are the skilled builders

from William Anelay.

Chairman Charles Anelay has been keeping a close watch

on this fabulous restoration.

-Charles.

-Hi.

Charles, I must admit to being a bit confused.

Now, I thought the project was nearly finished,

but it looks an awful long way to go to me.

This is absolutely it.

It's a completely different philosophy, in a way,

which they're calling shabby-chic,

and the whole story of this is it's about making the new stuff

feel like it fits in with the story of the building.

-Yes.

-So, yeah, we've already replaced all of the staircases here,

it's all new handrails, you're stood on a new floor.

You've a new little wall by the side of you.

But, actually, a lot of it, the architects have worked really hard

to make it feel like it fits in with the feel of the building.

But you're not going to get it replastered,

that's what it's going to look like.

Right. See the roof down there...?

Well, this is part of the story of the building,

because there's the houses at the front

-and the musical hall at the back...

-Yeah.

-..and a gap between the two.

-Yeah.

-So at one time,

that was the roof of one of the old little lean-to buildings

that they changed it around to make it into one space.

-Right.

-So, there you are. We've put a new skylight in up above,

but the old bit of roof stays there,

cos it's part of the story of the building.

-You love this building, don't you, Charles?

-Oh, it's fantastic.

It's a world of its own.

The thing is, you're conserving it.

It looks precarious, but presumably, one of your biggest jobs

has been to make it safe and make it fit for the 21st century?

Absolutely. It wasn't in good shape before we started

and a huge amount of work has gone into making it both strong enough,

putting it all back together again and making it feel like this place,

that it all belongs here.

And this team of builders take every request seriously.

So, come and have a look at this.

It's a tatty old bird's nest.

It is. And it's been kept all the way through the job,

because that's part of the feel of this building.

So when we got the documents from the architect,

there was a little note on it that said, "Save the bird's nest."

-And I thought, "This is a joke."

-No?

-No! So, we've put a label on it

to remind all the guys to save the bird's nest

all the way through the job.

This amazing project required 40 tonnes of sand,

1,000 metres of reclaimed floorboards and six brickies.

By the end of the project,

the builders would've restored the exterior of the building,

fitted five roof lights and installed a cocktail bar

on the first floor.

This Victorian music hall has been completely

brought into the 21st century.

That wall is all new because, although it was these three houses

that we were talking about,

parts of them have got knocked down and changed over time,

so we've actually recreated that back wall as if it was

one of the Georgian walls.

But because of the fire regulations,

we can't put Georgian windows into it.

It's an extraordinary mixture of styles, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-But it does work.

The building's restoration has ensured that all of the areas

and rooms in Wilton's have been utilised.

So the building, made fit for purpose,

really is sort of multifunctional.

You've got the music hall, there's a cafe-restaurant there.

You've got rehearsal spaces, education spaces,

there's, like, a little museum at the back there.

It's really making the building work for its living.

Absolutely. And all the different spaces are given a new task

or a new chance to shine, but with their old history just there.

Outside, site manager Mick Feather and the builders

have been busy working on Wilton's exterior.

As you can see here, there's quite a lot going on.

We've got shutters being put on the mahogany bar windows.

We've got some stone steps being installed

and then we've got the doors being put back on.

The guys that we have on the site, they're all specialists

in their own sorts of aspects and fields of work.

So we've got lime plasterers that are doing the external render

and coatings, we've got joiners who are skilled in restoration work,

not just being carpenters, but in details,

replicating old details using the existing fabrics

and making that good.

On this part of the building, it was non-existent,

it had all weathered away, the bricks had perished.

So this part has been actually rebuilt,

so we're just finishing off the finish of it now,

which is done with a float and brushes, just to tidy everything up.

That will dry and it'll match the rest of it.

On the windows, enormous oak shutters are going to be fixed.

Quite heavy, these. You can see the thickness of the door here.

You know you've got a good solid door.

And then, on the rear of it,

the bit that you won't see when the shutters actually close,

are all the recesses for the bolts, which are being chopped out,

so that when the doors go back, they fall flush.

What we're doing now is we're putting in a completely new

stone step, which is where the deliveries will go in.

When we think of Victorian society,

we mostly assume it was a polite and civilised era,

where morals and impeccable behaviour scored highly.

But the Victorians weren't really a bunch of prudes.

Music halls were racy and thousands of tickets were sold every week.

Unpopular acts had manure thrown at them.

Audience members were known to urinate on the floor.

Everybody smoked.

Probably, it was only the soggy floorboards that stopped the halls

from burning down!

I can't think of anything better than getting first-hand experience

of the atmosphere these colourful establishments created.

Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.

What a day I've had!

'Actor Peter John is performing in the style of a typical act

'from the glorious music hall days.'

Yes, my husband.

Let me tell you, we had to move away...

-cos the rent we couldn't pay.

-PIANO PLAYS

The moving man came round just after dark.

There was me and my old man, shoving things inside the van.

We got all that we could pack in the van and that's a fact.

So there wasn't any room for me to ride.

My old man said, "Follow the van!

"Don't dilly-dally on the way."

Off went the van with my home packed in it

and I followed on with the old cock-linnet...

You all right, Dickie? He's all right.

# Well, I dillied and I dallied

# I dallied and I dillied

# I've lost me way and I don't know where to roam

# And you can't trust the special like the old-time copper

# When you can't find

# Your way home! #

Bye-bye, everyone! I'm coming, yes, I'm coming!

Bye!

After a quick costume change,

performer Peter John and music halls historian Michael Kilgarriff

explain what made the music halls so special.

After the Industrial Revolution, I just think, you know,

the burgeoning towns in the north and all over the country,

they all had music halls.

I mean, we're pre-cinema, we're pre-television.

I mean, it must have been a colossal industry.

It was. It was.

But it was still very much local.

-Uh-huh.

-It was, to one extent, a local pub.

If they had a back garden,

they would throw up a hall in the back garden.

Were the music halls the sole preserve of the working classes?

The working classes themselves changed.

There was a lot of upper aspirations.

Between 1840 and 1880, the population of London doubled.

You had all these people who had spare, disposable income

and they needed somewhere to spend that money.

Where better than their local music hall?

The music halls themselves changed a great deal.

It was around the 1850s, really.

A man called Charles Morton,

who took all the various disparate elements that there were

of popular entertainment and he tried various experiments

and came up with the first, what we think of today as the

first music hall, where there was a small charge for admission,

not too much, just enough for the working man to be able to afford.

There were ladies on stage and in the audience.

You could take your wives and daughters.

These may have been places for family entertainment,

but prostitution was rife and women would commonly display their wares

in the aisles of the music hall.

They, like West End pubs or clubs or hotels,

would cater to different levels of society,

depending on your status and how much you could afford to pay.

Prostitution, certainly. But then, prostitution was everywhere

and the Police Commissioner at the time, I think, rather boldly

and bravely said, "Well, at least we know where the ladies are.

"We can keep them out of danger, we can keep them out of trouble."

Rowdy crowds would come and watch the variety shows,

which included comedy, magic and music.

When the music hall came in, it began to...

The impetus of music and the lyrics began to change to the chorus

and people sat through the lyrics of the verses,

just really waiting...

And then joined in with the artist.

So that was something that was quite new with music halls,

that you could join in.

Peter, you're an actor and performer. Do you have, like,

a set of rules when you're performing in music halls?

You've got a direct liaison with the audience.

So you're talking directly to them.

The only other thing is pantomime,

-which, again, I'm very fond of doing...

-Yes.

..when you're directly involved with the audience.

Were the music hall stars very, very wealthy in those days?

Did they make a lot of money?

Oh, by today's standards, yes. I mean, remember,

you could have a live-in parlour maid for a fiver a year.

-Mm-hm.

-So, for a music hall artist to get 60-70 a week...

And who was the richest of them all?

Oh, Lord.

Well, Marie Lloyd left...

When she died at 52, she left £25,000.

She was notoriously generous.

Marie Lloyd was known as the Queen of the Music Hall,

earning £100 a week with her smutty innuendos.

Any song can be interpreted as being saucy.

She's supposed to have been hauled before magistrates

and sang an innocent song straight,

and than sang it again with all her famous innuendo, wink,

and suddenly it became as filthy as all get-out,

so it was all in the mind.

-Yes, yes.

-And she must have been like the Kardashians of her day,

with three husbands, numerous court appearances...

She was quite a girl. I just wish I could have seen her.

I've definitely built a picture of the entertainment extravaganza

music halls provided in Victorian times...

..and the sort of show revellers would have seen at Wilton's.

While there may have been a raucous going on upstairs,

what interests me is what lies beneath.

Building manager Jonathan Freeman is in the darkest depths

of Wilton's basement to explain the sheer magic of this place.

I keep trying to imagine London at that time.

This was where people went for entertainment, working people.

Totally. This was a popular East End music hall.

It's said West Enders just came here to spy on what people

were doing and, yeah, it was run by and for the East Enders.

John Wilson, of course, really transforms the future

of the building and left such a great legacy.

What a legacy! So what sort of shenanigans were going on then?

Well, of course, this was the red-light district of London.

There were the opium dens down at Limehouse and there were plenty of

brothels in the area, that's for certain.

And the docks were so lively. There were 2,000 ships at any one time

moored up on the Thames around that era.

And, of course, it wasn't policed, not until 1829 -

so, in fact, it was self-policed.

Sailors were very well catered for at Wilton's

and we know that sometimes they needed to get out quick, in a hurry,

so there were several hatches in the floor areas and it's written that

they would certainly jump down the hatches

and disappear off to the docks.

Possibly there was a tunnel here under the hall.

We haven't found it yet.

-Right.

-There are a couple of areas we might be able to investigate

in the future.

In the 1880s, Wilton's was bought by the Wesleyan Methodist Mission,

who had long criticised the drinking and debauchery it encouraged.

They had it for 70 years, until the mid-1950s,

and it was then used for a few years as a warehouse.

It then remained empty, suffering from structural damage and decay.

But this magical building managed to avoid being knocked down

during the slum clearances in the 1960s, thanks to campaigns

including well-known figures such as comedian Spike Milligan,

and the building was saved.

It was closed for over 30 years,

only being used occasionally as a film set,

but finally reopened its doors to the public in 1997.

This is the most complete renovation to take place

since John Wilton left.

But when it came to today's restoration,

thought and consideration were top of the list.

And the way the restoration's been done very, very carefully,

it does keep that atmosphere.

Yes, it's got many layers and many stories to tell.

And so, it's so important to save that and to keep all the quirkiness,

to let the building tell its own story.

-You can read it, quite literally.

-Yeah. Oh, wonderfully said.

The builders' remit was to make it look like they'd never been.

So, when you're replacing old floorboards,

that can be a little tricky.

But site manager Mick has just the thing.

These floorboards here are over 200 years old.

They've got stains on them, they've got wear on them,

they've got everything what's happened to them over their lifetime.

But new timber in a situation like this stands out like a sore thumb,

as we say in Yorkshire.

So we have two ways that you can do this, really.

Yorkshiremen like their tea, so here's how we brew tea in Yorkshire,

in a big dish. No, I'm only kidding.

This is for the benefit of staining.

The colour of the teabags is ideal for tanning.

Then, a nice soft cloth, plenty on it.

Just throw the tea on, stab it on.

And this will then stain...

sort of colour the timber down from its whitish colour,

which it is when it's new.

It dulls it down to replicate sort of ageing so, you know,

you just keep putting it on, just keep dabbing it.

If you have a look at a builder's teapot or a builder's mug,

they don't wash them out. You'll see how brown and stained it is.

And this is all it's doing with the timber here, it's just staining it.

But Mick has another method up his sleeve.

We generally use this one after three o'clock in the afternoon,

but a drop of red wine never goes amiss.

And if you wanted, you can just gently splash it on,

try not to wet everywhere...

But, like that, and just rub it in, let it dry,

and that then just replicates when people spill it.

Their criteria when we came was to not know that we'd been.

With the steps as they were, everybody would've known.

We'd have been for 12, 18 months, two years, until they got in.

But doing this bit...

just a little bit of care and it makes everything look a lot better

in these circumstances as to what they want, so, you know...

And you could probably finish the bottle off when you've done it all,

so there's benefits both ways.

The builders are doing the final finishing touches

so this grand music hall can continue to do what it does best -

provide all-round entertainment.

And I think I'm just in the nick of time

to help lay the last few floorboards that they've been replacing.

OK, Dave, well, here's your chance to hide some of the modern work,

cos we're just re-fixing these old floorboards that we've got

on top of the fire-protective board.

Are these the original boards, Charles?

These ones, because this is a whole new floor,

these are reclaimed boards from another project.

-Yeah.

-But they look really similar to the ones that were here before.

Of course, this is a new corridor, so it wouldn't be original boards,

-would it?

-Exactly. You're getting the hang of how it all works out

across the buildings. So, yeah,

what we're doing now is we've just got a few of these boards that

we needed to check and now we need to re-fix them

on top of the fire boarding. So, any minute now, you can have a go

at making it look like nothing's changed

-and it's all been here forever.

-And it won't catch fire.

Do you know what? I'm feeling guilty, cos I haven't done anything.

-You'd better get stuck in!

-I'll do the boards.

Come on, Val, give us a shot! I'll finish the last two.

-Is that the right end?

-Yeah.

So, presumably, do these have to be tight, Val?

-Yeah.

-Now, what do I do?

Do I basically follow... Obviously, I've got joists there, there,

-cos I can see the screws...

-Yeah.

-So I just follow the joists?

Yeah, that's right.

You know, Charles, we're using recycled boards here,

yet I'm using modern nails.

Would there ever be a case in restoration where you'd recycle

the nails as well, put back the old nails?

Yeah, there are. Especially where you've got something

perhaps more medieval. And, yeah, sometimes we do have to use

blacksmith-cut nails specially.

Well, we'd better get back to the job in hand.

Val, over to you!

Even though I let Val put the last board down,

I'm hoping they'll save me a special honour.

Val, can I do the last nail at Wilton's?

-Yeah. No worries.

-Yes!

It's a bit bent, isn't it?

Right.

-Job's done.

-That's it!

-Excellent.

In its day, the music hall would've been frequented

by all sorts of people.

Wilton's is in an area which has been one of the most

multicultural parts of London throughout the ages.

With Whitechapel being slap-bang next to the River Thames,

this really isn't a surprise.

Throughout the 19th century,

the local population rocketed by 20% every decade,

mostly due to immigration.

Historian David Rosenberg shows how each left their mark.

What came in at those docks, it was not just goods.

People got off the boats.

Also, East London was London's first manufacturing area.

You had Belgian weavers come to the East End of London in the 1400s.

You had Huguenot refugees come in the late 1600s.

You also had Irish people coming,

particularly through the 19th century.

And then, from the late 1880s, you had the community that my family

came from, who were the East European Jewish community.

Pockets of Chinese,

Somali and Indian immigrants arrived this way from the 1850s -

ship workers who jumped ship.

You had communities established in the East End representing those

different groups. And, if you look at the census figures from 1921,

Limehouse, where we are now,

was the centre of the Chinese community in London.

But today, the largest migrant group in Whitechapel

are the South Asian community, predominantly the Bengalis -

and they brought their own version of music halls to Whitechapel,

something to rival the most raucous of cockney knees-ups.

Music halls were a place for people to meet old friends

and bring their family.

With the restoration of this glorious building complete,

I can't think of anything better than letting my hair down

with my wife and stepdaughter...

# He'll get by without his rabbit pie

# So run, rabbit, run, rabbit Run, run, run. #

..for an evening of fun, song and laughter.

-ALL:

-# My old man said Follow the van

# And don't dilly dally on the way

# I dillied and dallied Dallied and dillied

# Lost me way and don't know where to roam

# Well you can't trust a special like the old-time coppers

# When you can't find your way home. #

Do you know, Tom, I've been to many gigs and kind of events and shows,

but I've never felt such kind of sheer joy and enthusiasm in a room.

It's fantastic.

Thank you for saying so. It's such a special place.

And the feeling, performing in this venue,

the performers that have performed on this stage and the spirit in the

walls, it really is a special place.

It's just such good fun.

I mean, the songs are great, you know?

They're all timeless songs and songs that we never really know

where we learnt them from - from grandparents or from school.

I just think, with Wilton's, with the hall being back as it was,

this is going on here and it's the same spirit as it would've been

-in 1850.

-Absolutely.

This building for the past two centuries has given such joy

and pleasure to thousands of people.

It's here, thanks to restoration, thanks to building,

thanks to Peter's hard work and imagination.

I just hope that Wilton's lives forever.

'Next time, I'll be in West Yorkshire helping to restore this

'jewel of Bradford's architectural heritage -

'the spectacular Victorian City Hall.

'I'll be getting up close and personal with Britain's monarchs...'

There's about three or four kings.

The ends of the sceptres have been deliberately shaped as willies.

No!

'..I'll be discovering why the city became so wealthy...'

Look at that, it's like the gates of Mordor!

'..and I'll meet an angel who's lost her horn.'

It's more like an episode of Casualty than The Hairy Builder.