Hugh Price Hughes (1857-1902) – Methodist preacher, orator, founder of The Methodist Times newspaper and leader of the influential West London Mission – realised that a substantial underclass of needy people were unwilling to go to church and therefore cut off from support which could improve their lives.
He wanted to steer Nonconformists away from a preoccupation with individual salvation towards practical efforts to make poor people’s lives better.
People who only owned one set of clothes were disinclined to mix with those who had a “Sunday best” outfit, and those who avoided religious services often assumed that churches and chapels were populated by snobs and hypocrites.
Supported by the Hull flour-miller Joseph Rank (1854-1943), Hughes initiated the “Forward Movement” to establish city- and town-centre Methodist missions that didn’t look like churches from the outside and felt like theatres or concert halls within – auditoria with facilities for music, variety performances and eventually films that could equally serve for worship and entertainment.
These “Central Halls” became ubiquitous in late-Victorian Britain: DMBI: A Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland.
The most magnificent of all was the Westminster Central Hall, built in a baroque style that distinguishes it from the gothic Abbey which stands directly opposite. It is more modern building than it looks, constructed around a reinforced concrete frame, with a huge domed ceiling above the 2,300-seat central space.
It was designed by Edwin Alfred Rickards FRIBA (1872–1920) and was constructed 1905-11 at a cost of just over a million pounds.
It replaced the disreputable Royal Aquarium (built 1876; demolished 1903) where, according to Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson’s Lost Theatres of London (1968), “unaccompanied ladies promenaded through the hall in search of male companionship”, and the slightly less risqué Imperial Theatre (demolished 1907).
The Methodist Central Hall has a track record of celebrity events. It was the venue for the inaugural meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in 1946, during which the congregation worshipped at the Coliseum Theatre adjacent to Trafalgar Square, and the second public performance of a version of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
There were expressions of Methodist disapproval when the Hall applied for a licence to sell alcohol in 2005.
Nevertheless, the Central Hall is true to its founder’s mission, combining regular worship with an energetic contribution to public life.