Hungerford Hall was a lecture theatre built beside Hungerford Market

Hungerford Market

Hungerford Market was a market in London, near Charing Cross on the Strand, housed in two different buildings on the same site from around 1680 to 1862. The first market was held from about 1680 in a London house of the Hungerford family. This building became dilapidated, and was replaced by a...

 near Charing Cross

Charing Cross

Charing Cross denotes the junction of Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square in central London, England. It is named after the now demolished Eleanor cross that stood there, in what was once the hamlet of Charing. The site of the cross is now occupied by an equestrian...

 in 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...

 in 1851. It was used for public entertainments, including demonstrations of magic, mesmerism and optical illusion

Optical illusion

An optical illusion is characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality. The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a perception that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source...

s. It burned down in 1854, badly damaging the adjoining Hungerford Market.

Swiss-Italian entrepreneur Carlo Gatti

Carlo Gatti

Carlo Gatti was a Swiss entrepreneur in the Victorian era. He came to England in 1847, where he established restaurants and an ice importing business. He is credited with first making ice cream available to the general public. He moved into music halls. He returned to Switzerland in 1871, leaving...

 constructed a music hall

Music hall

Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...

 on the site, which opened in 1857. It was bought by the South Eastern Railway

South Eastern Railway (UK)

The South Eastern Railway was a railway company in south-eastern England from 1836 until 1922. The company was formed to construct a route from London to Dover. Branch lines were later opened to Tunbridge Wells, Hastings, Canterbury and other places in Kent...

 in 1862, and incorporated into Charing Cross railway station

Charing Cross railway station

Charing Cross railway station, also known as London Charing Cross, is a central London railway terminus in the City of Westminster, England. It is one of 18 stations managed by Network Rail, and trains serving it are operated by Southeastern...

, which opened on 11 January 1864.

External links

• Playbill for "holiday entertainments" at Hungerford Hall, 1852 from the British Library
  British Library
  The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...