Assembly rooms
Encyclopedia
In Great Britain and Ireland
Great Britain and Ireland
Great Britain and Ireland are two neighbouring islands situated in the north-west of Europe.As a phrase, Great Britain and Ireland or Britain and Ireland can refer to either two separate entities being discussed together due to the close cultural and historical links between the islands, or can...

, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, assembly rooms were gathering places for members of the higher social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...

es open to members of both sexes. At that time most entertaining was done at home and there were few public places of entertainment open to both sexes besides theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

s (and there were few of those outside London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

). Upper class
Upper class
In social science, the "upper class" is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area.- Historical meaning :...

 men had more options, including coffee houses and later gentlemen's clubs.

Major sets of assembly rooms in London, in spa town
Spa town
A spa town is a town situated around a mineral spa . Patrons resorted to spas to "take the waters" for their purported health benefits. The word comes from the Belgian town Spa. In continental Europe a spa was known as a ville d'eau...

s such as Bath, and in important provincial cities such as York
York
York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...

, were able to accommodate hundreds, or in some cases over a thousand people for events such as masquerade ball
Masquerade ball
A masquerade ball is an event which the participants attend in costume wearing a mask. - History :...

s (masked balls), conventional balls
Ball (dance)
A ball is a formal dance. The word 'ball' is derived from the Latin word "ballare", meaning 'to dance'; the term also derived into "bailar", which is the Spanish and Portuguese word for dance . In Catalan it is the same word, 'ball', for the dance event.Attendees wear evening attire, which is...

, public concerts and assemblies (simply gatherings for conversation, perhaps with incidental music and entertainments) or Salons
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...

. By later standards these were formal events: the attendees were usually screened to make sure no one of insufficient rank gained admittance; admission might be subscription only; and unmarried women were chaperoned. Nonetheless, assemblies played an important part in the marriage market of the day.

A major set of assembly rooms consisted of a main room and several smaller subsidiary rooms such as card rooms, tea rooms and supper rooms. On the other hand in smaller towns a single large room attached to the best inn might serve for the occasional assembly for the local landed gentry
Landed gentry
Landed gentry is a traditional British social class, consisting of land owners who could live entirely off rental income. Often they worked only in an administrative capacity looking after the management of their own lands....

.

Formal assemblies and the associated assembly rooms faded away in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as the range of places of public entertainment increased (for example public dance halls and nightclubs) and attitudes became more accepting of women from the higher social classes attending them. Also to some extent they were supplanted by the ballrooms of major hotels as British hotels became larger from the railway age onwards.

Examples

  • Almack's
    Almack's
    Almack's Assembly Rooms was a social club in London from 1765 to 1871 and one of the first to admit both men and women. It was one of a limited number of upper class mixed-sex public social venues in the British capital in an era when the most important venues for the hectic social season were the...

     - London's most exclusive assembly rooms.
  • The Pantheon
    Pantheon, London
    The Pantheon, was a place of public entertainment on the south side of Oxford Street, London, England. It was designed by James Wyatt and opened in 1772. The main rotunda was one of the largest rooms built in England up to that time and had a central dome somewhat reminiscent of the celebrated...

     - an architecturally grander but more briefly fashionable set of assembly rooms in London.
  • Bath Assembly Rooms
    Bath Assembly Rooms
    The Bath Assembly Rooms, designed by John Wood the Younger in 1769, are a set of elegant assembly rooms located in the heart of the World Heritage City of Bath in England which are now open to the public as a visitor attraction...

     - the assembly rooms in England's most fashionable spa.
  • York Assembly Rooms
    York Assembly Rooms
    The York Assembly Rooms is an 18th century assembly rooms building in York, England, originally used as a place for high class social gatherings in the city....

     - a notable building designed by Lord Burlington
    Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington
    Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork PC , born in Yorkshire, England, was the son of Charles Boyle, 2nd Earl of Burlington and 3rd Earl of Cork...

    .
  • Victoria Rooms (Bristol)
    Victoria Rooms (Bristol)
    The Victoria Rooms, also known as the Vic Rooms, houses the University of Bristol's music department in Clifton, Bristol, England, on a prominent site at the junction of Queens Road and Whiteladies Road...

  • Assembly Rooms (Edinburgh)
    Assembly Rooms (Edinburgh)
    The Assembly Rooms is a former assembly rooms located in central Edinburgh, the rooms now host a number of events including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Hogmanay celebrations. There are four rooms that are used year-round and are available for private functions: Music Hall, Ballroom,...

  • Assembly Rooms, Surbiton in Surbiton
    Surbiton
    Surbiton, a suburban area of London in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, is situated next to the River Thames, with a mixture of Art-Deco courts, more recent residential blocks and grand, spacious 19th century townhouses blending into a sea of semi-detached 20th century housing estates...

    , Surrey.
  • New Assembly and Concert Rooms, 1796, Glasgow
    Glasgow
    Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

    , later the home of the Athenaeum (demolished by new owners, the General Post Office, in 1892)
  • Assembly Rooms, Newcastle - built in 1776 in Newcastle upon Tyne
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

    , one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture
    Georgian architecture
    Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...

     in Newcastle's Grainger Town
    Grainger Town
    Grainger Town is the historic heart of Newcastle upon Tyne, England.Based around classical streets built by Richard Grainger, a builder and developer, between 1824 and 1841, some of Newcastle upon Tyne's finest buildings and streets lie within the Grainger Town area of the City centre including...

    .
  • Dumfries
    Dumfries
    Dumfries is a market town and former royal burgh within the Dumfries and Galloway council area of Scotland. It is near the mouth of the River Nith into the Solway Firth. Dumfries was the county town of the former county of Dumfriesshire. Dumfries is nicknamed Queen of the South...

     Assembly rooms, c.1825 - elegant building by Walter Newall, Architect, of Dumfries

Public gardens

London also had a number of outdoor "public gardens" where similar entertainments took place. They were more commercial establishments and tended to have less exclusive rules on admission. Each had at least one major indoor space for balls and the like. See: Marylebone Gardens
Marylebone Gardens
Marylebone or Marybone Gardens was a London pleasure garden sited in the grounds of the old manor house of Marylebone and frequented from the mid-17th century, when Marylebone was a village separated from London by fields and market gardens, to the third quarter of the 18th century...

, Vauxhall Gardens
Vauxhall Gardens
Vauxhall Gardens was a pleasure garden, one of the leading venues for public entertainment in London, England from the mid 17th century to the mid 19th century. Originally known as New Spring Gardens, the site was believed to have opened before the Restoration of 1660 with the first mention being...

, Ranelagh Gardens
Ranelagh Gardens
Ranelagh Gardens were public pleasure gardens located in Chelsea, then just outside London, England in the 18th century.-History:The Ranelagh Gardens were so called because they occupied the site of Ranelagh House, built in 1688-89 by the first Earl of Ranelagh, Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital ,...

 and Cremorne Gardens
Cremorne Gardens
Cremorne Gardens was the name of two pleasure gardens established in England and Australia in the mid 19th century by James Ellis .*Cremorne Gardens, London was established in 1846 on the banks of the Thames at Chelsea...

.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK