Assembly rooms

Assembly rooms

In Great Britain and Ireland, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, assembly rooms were gathering places for members of the higher social classes 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 theatres (and there were few of those outside London). Upper class men had more options, including coffee houses and later gentlemen's clubs.

Major sets of assembly rooms in London, in spa towns such as Bath and in important provincial cities such as York, were able to accommodate hundreds, or in some cases over a thousand people for events such as masquerades (masked balls), conventional balls, public concerts and assemblies (simply gatherings for conversation, perhaps with incidental music and entertainments). 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.

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 - London's most exclusive assembly rooms.
*The Pantheon - an architecturally grander but more briefly fashionable set of assembly rooms in London.
*Bath Assembly Rooms - the assembly rooms in England's most fashionable spa.
*York Assembly Rooms - a notable building designed by Lord Burlington.
*Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh
*Assembly Rooms, Surbiton
*New Assembly and Concert Rooms, 1796, Glasgow, 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, one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in Newcastle's Grainger Town.
* Dumfries 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, Vauxhall Gardens, Ranelagh Gardens and Cremorne Gardens.


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Assembly Rooms de Bath — L une des Assembly Rooms de Bath. Les Assembly Rooms de Bath, conçues par John Wood le Jeune en 1769, sont un élégant ensemble de « salles des fêtes » situé au cœur de la partie historique de Bath, dans le Somerset, en Angleterre, et… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • assembly rooms — plural noun chiefly Brit. a public room or hall in which meetings or social functions are held …   English new terms dictionary

  • Bath Assembly Rooms — Infobox Historic building caption= name=Bath Assembly Rooms location town=Bath location country=England architect=John Wood the Younger client= engineer= construction start date=24 May 1769 completion date=1771 date demolished= cost= structural… …   Wikipedia

  • York Assembly Rooms — The York Assembly Rooms is an 18th century building in York, England, originally used as a place for high class social gatherings in the city. The building is situated on Blake Street and is a Grade I listed building. It was designed by Lord… …   Wikipedia

  • assembly — n. (pl. ies) 1 the act or an instance of assembling or gathering together. 2 a a group of persons gathered together, esp. as a deliberative body or a legislative council. b a gathering of the entire members of a school. 3 the assembling of a… …   Useful english dictionary

  • Royal Pump Rooms — The Royal Pump Rooms is a building in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, UK. It was the most famous of several spa baths opened in Leamington between the late 18th and mid 19th centuries. People would travel from throughout the country, and indeed… …   Wikipedia

  • General Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland — The Assembly Hall is located between the Lawnmarket and The Mound in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is the meeting place of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. HistoryFollowing the Disruption in the Church of Scotland in 1843, the emergent… …   Wikipedia

  • Victoria Rooms (Bristol) — Infobox Historic building caption=The Victoria Rooms now house the University s Department of Music. name=Victoria Rooms location town=Bristol location country=England map type=Bristol latitude=51.458 longitude= 2.6091 architect=Charles Dyer… …   Wikipedia

  • Provincial Assembly of the Punjab — The Provincial Assembly of the Punjab is a unicameral legislature of elected representatives of the province of Punjab in Lahore, eastern Pakistan [http://www.pap.gov.pk/ Provincial Assembly of the Punjab] ] . The Assembly was established under… …   Wikipedia

  • Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center — Lunghua Civil Assembly Centre was one of the internment camps established by the Empire of Japan in Shanghai for European and American citizens after the Japanese took over Shanghai in December 1942. James Graham Ballard was interned in the camp… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”