page_title: Exeter Hall
section_title: A contemporary description
hierarchical_section_title: Exeter Hall / A contemporary description
caption_attribution_description: English: A meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League in Exeter Hall in 1846.
context_page_description: Exeter Hall was a hall on the north side of the Strand, London, England.
context_section_description: The following is from 1838: 
  [The Freemasons Hall] is capable of containing 1600 persons, but as such accommodation was even then very insufficient for the numbers who wished to attend the meetings, ladies were excluded from those of the Bible Society; and at the Church Missionary, and other popular anniversaries, the crowd was overwhelming. This was peculiarly inconvenient to the Chairman and speakers; for as the room was always filled long before the time for opening the proceedings, and there is no entrance to the platform but through the body of the hall, the difficulty of reaching the chair, and the speakers' seats, was extreme.
  It was therefore determined, about the year 1828-9, by some influential persons, to enter into a scheme for building an immense edifice, which should contain a room large enough to hold any meeting, however numerous, with a smaller hall for lesser audiences, and a variety of committee rooms and offices, to be occupied by several societies, then crowded into the house. No. 32, Sackville Street, Piccadilly, and in other private buildings.
  The site of Exeter Change, in the Strand, was selected, as central and convenient, and the fabric, known as Exeter Hall, was completed in 1831.
   
  It is a large building, but from its very narrow frontage towards the Strand, is likely, at first sight, to disappoint those who come to London with their ideas of its exterior formed from what they have heard of its interior dimensions. It has scarcely any visible front, excepting a lofty entrance, between two handsome Corinthian pillars; so that many persons, who have intended to visit it, have passed by its entrance without perceiving that any public building was near them. At those hours when any large meeting is assembling or dispersing, few can mistake Exeter Hall; the living tide, which then pours in or out of its doors, is generally such as to impede the free passage of the Strand on that side; and the line of carriages, which extends far along the street in front, and up to the side entrance, is equally striking, when any great assembly is expected to break up.
  The grand doorway, in the Strand, leads into a wide interior space, from whence ascend two curved flights of stairs, one on each side, which meet in one broad straight flight above, leading to the great hall, and under the junction of which opens a spacious passage. This joins, at right angles, the passage from the side entrance, so that the ground plan of these passages resembles a capital T, with rooms opening on each side of the upper line.
  On the lower floor are the smaller hall, (a room said to be capable of containing 1000 persons, the gallery included,) the offices of the Reformation Society, that of the Protestant Association, &c., with a room now called the Directors' Room, in which those committees, whose offices are in distant parts of London, assemble to proceed to the hall, when they hold their public meetings there. The back-stairs, leading to the raised seats, galleries, and platform of the larger hall, and also round the gallery leading to the first floor offices, are situated behind the rooms Nos. 8 and 9, occupied by the Reformation Society.
   
  The large room of Exeter Hall was built to contain 4000 persons, with a splendid range of raised seats, to the left of the main entrance, a spacious area in front of it, and a platform, which of itself will accommodate 500 persons, to the right. At the back of the platform were formerly two sunk galleries, like the side-boxes of a theatre, which were opened or closed at pleasure, by means of moveable planks, which may be put aside during the progress of a meeting. They are now thrown completely open. The platform itself is elevated about six feet above the floor of the area, or central seats, and is finished in front by a handsome iron rail; the large and ornamental bars of which, placed about one foot from each other, are connected at top by a thick mahogany spar. In the centre of its front row stands the chair, which in form much resembles that of King Edward the Confessor, in Westminster Ab
caption: Meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League in Exeter Hall in 1846.
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