page_title: King's Hall, Herne Bay
section_title: Building
hierarchical_section_title: King's Hall, Herne Bay / King Edward VII Memorial Hall / Building
caption_attribution_description: Kings Hall, Herne Bay, Kent England. Looking south-west, at north-east corner of building.
context_page_description: The King's Hall is a theatre, concert hall and dance hall at Herne Bay, Kent, England. It was built as The Pavilion in 1903–1904, developed as the King Edward VII Memorial Hall in 1913 in memory of the late king, and was being called The King's Hall by 1912 while still at planning stage. Both building phases were designed by the local Council surveyor F.W.J. Palmer, CE. The year 2013 was the centenary of the completion of the second and final phase of this building and its grand opening by Princess Beatrice on 10 July 1913.
context_section_description: In 1913 the Pavilion was developed as a memorial to the late King Edward VII. The architect was again the Council surveyor F.W.J. Palmer who presented his plans in April 1911.  The Council applied to the Local Government Board (LGB) for a loan, and the work cost £6,000: £5,000 for the excavation and construction; £1,000 for furnishings. £5,956 was received from the LGB in August 1912. The builders were Hardy & Co. of Woking whose tender of £5,578 on 16 September 1912 was accepted for the erection work, and one of the contractors was electricity company Hunt & Sons of Charles Street, Herne Bay, who ran a cable underground from their works, beneath Canterbury Road and through the cliff. The entertainers Rouse, Way & Wilson made an advance investment of £700 in the theatre, the profits to be shared by the Council. The excavation commenced in October 1912, and "many thousands of yards of London Clay" were removed to extend the building into the cliff. The 1904 building was incorporated and extended as a theatre, concert hall and dance hall below the Downs on East Cliff, and the existing small auditorium became the vestibule for the new hall. The 1913 Hall was designed to accommodate 1,500, with 1,100 in the open-air theatre on the roof. The high price for this build partly reflects the large excavation into the cliff for the Hall, and the early use of ferro-concrete, with steel bars made by the Spiral Bond Bar Company, who had patented the process that they used in the same year. The building was specially designed not to interfere with the view from houses on Beacon Hill to the south; nevertheless a 60 feet (18 m) flagstaff was erected between the Hall and the Beacon Hill estate.
  At a size of 136 feet (41 m) long, 60 feet (18 m) wide and 20 feet (6.1 m) high, the Hall provided space for seating 1,500. In 1913 the ceiling was plastered with a cornice and a "deep frieze of a delicate tint, and a picture moulding" around three sides of the Hall; this has now been replaced. The four main reinforced concrete roof beams create five ceiling bays, and in each bay are three plaster centrepieces representing vines and grapes. These are ventilator-covers. The middle one of each three originally carried copper bronze electroliers with chains and Holophane reflectors. (Today, more numerous and bigger lights are fixed there.) The walls were originally largely of glass and painted in eau de nil or pale green, with a darker shade on the dado. The special dance floor was rock maple over concrete, and the acoustics were said to be "perfect". There was a further tiered seating area on the roof for 1,100 deckchairs facing the cast iron bandstand and linking the roof with the Downs. The roof was "illuminated by five electric light standards, and the columns, the upper ornamental part of the bandstand, and the ribs of the bandstand roof [were] picked out with fairylights." The box office in the vestibule was "artistically designed . . . of brick faced with plaster in the Georgian style." The marble plaque on its front was carved by Emil Fuchs who had designed the King Edward VII Coronation Medal. The old tongue-and-groove wood flooring of the vestibule was now replaced with terrazzo paving, with the town crest decorating the area in front of the kiosk (today this is covered over, or possibly removed). Over the Hall's exit doors (now removed) and over the kiosk were bullseye glass circles.
  The original 1913 stage incorporated a faux cottage standing on an apron platform against the south wall of the Hall. After Herne Bay's two other theatres were burned down in the 1920s, The King's hall consequently had to take on all the large concerts. The little cottage stage was seen to be inadequate, and a large stage with proscenium arch was built at the east end of the room. The faux cottage and apron were eventually dismantled. With the old "cottage" stage against the south wall and the four large concrete ceiling-beams running north-south, the acoustics had been considered perfect. However the positioning of the new stage against the east wall caused so
caption: King's Hall 2011
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