Wilton’s is the world's oldest surviving grand music hall. Here, in the 1850s and 60s, classical overtures, opera and operetta, choral, contemporary and folk songs were enormously popular, long before "old time music hall" evolved. John Wilton built this theatre behind his public house, The Prince of Denmark in 1858, in Graces Alley, E1. The pub was locally famous as the first to use mahogany fittings. Wilton’s was described as the "Handsomest Room in Town". A sun-burner chandelier with 300 gas jets and 27,000 cut crystals dominated a mirrored hall where George Leybourne (Champagne Charlie) sang. Rumour has it that the first ever can-can was performed and promptly banned at Wilton’s. The auditorium remains incredibly intact – the original cast iron 'barley sugar' pillars support papier-mâché balconies under paper roses set in a vaulted roof. In Wilton's day, 1,500 people used to cram into the music hall to hear the top acts – artistes from the Royal Opera House were lured over in full costume to perform late night favourite arias.
John Wilton’s died aged 60, Wilton’s continued as a music hall until 1884. The hall was taken over by the East End Mission of the Methodist Church in 1885 and kept the name The Old Mahogany Mission until 1956. In the first dock strike of 1898 it served 2,000 meals a day to the strikers and was the HQ for the people of the East End who gathered to stop Mosley's fascists in the Battle of Cable Street, and in World War II gave shelter to a badly blitzed community. During the 1950s the Mission set up a mobile cinema called Penny Pictures, it also operated in the streets of the East End. In 1956 Wiltons was sold and used as a rag warehouse. Having survived the bombing of the London docks it was next in line for the slum clearances and demolition plans of the 1960s. In 1964 Sir John Betjeman campaigned to make Wiltons a listed building to save it from demolition. Wiltons was given a Grade II * listing. Many people have helped in saving Wiltons – they include Laurence Olivier, Peter Sellars, John Earl, Colin Sorensen, Liza Minelli, Norma Dunbar, Roy Hudd and Christopher Biggins. For many years it was owned by the GLC and then the London Music Halls Trust.
Since re-opening the theatre in 1999 (following an intense drive to prepare it for public use in only two months), The Wilton’s Music Hall Trust has raised and invested over £450,000 on the building.