Qualla: Albert Hall, Nottingham

Albert Hall, Nottingham: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Superhasn at English Wikipedia, Public domain. On 9 October 1970 a young band called T. Rex played the Albert Hall in Nottingham. Three months later, on 19 January 1971, Black Sabbath brought the Paranoid tour to the same stage. Six years before that, on 2 March 1964, the Rolling Stones had played their second British tour there. And on 21 March 1938, Sergei Rachmaninoff sat at its piano for an evening recital. The building had been put up to keep working-class Nottingham off the drink. By the time the rock bands arrived, almost no one remembered that.

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Image: Superhasn at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Albert Hall, Nottingham: Temperance and Watson Fothergill

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Hassocks5489, CC0. The original Albert Hall went up in 1873 as a Temperance Hall - one of the wave of municipal alcohol-free entertainment venues that the Victorian temperance movement had been building since the 1830s, an attempt to give the urban working class somewhere to spend their evenings th...

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Image: User:Hassocks5489 | CC0

Albert Hall, Nottingham: Fire and Florence Boot

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smashman, Public domain. On 22 April 1906 the building burned. The Methodists, examining the wreckage, discovered they had been under-insured. They turned to one of their own, the architect Albert Edward Lambert - the man responsible for Nottingham's Midland railway station - and asked for something new....

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Image: Smashman | Public domain

Albert Hall, Nottingham: The Guest List

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Hallam-Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The names move chronologically through the twentieth century. Yehudi Menuhin in 1934, only eighteen and already touring as a violinist. Sir Oswald Mosley addressing the British Union of Fascists in March 1936, seven months before Cable Street and three years before the war that w...

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Image: David Hallam-Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Albert Hall, Nottingham: The City Organ

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alberthallnottingham at en.wikipedia, Public domain. Jesse Boot - by then the first Baron Trent - gave the Hall its organ in 1909. Built by J.J. Binns at a cost of £4,500, it was billed as the City Organ, intended as a gift to Nottingham as much as to the Methodists. The Italian and Spanish walnut casework was made in the Boots sho...

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Image: Alberthallnottingham at en.wikipedia | Public domain

Albert Hall, Nottingham: From Mission to Multipurpose

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrewrabbott, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Methodist mission closed in 1982, the congregation merging with Parliament Street Methodist Church. Nottingham City Council bought the hall in 1987 and refurbished it, inserting a floor at the level of the front of the circle to create a separate ground-floor hall and linking...

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Image: Andrewrabbott | CC BY-SA 3.0