Queens Road
Route
Queen's Road - Park Place - Berkeley Square - Park Street - Unity Street - Orchard Street - College Green
Distance
2.3 km
Map
At the top of Queen’s Road stands the Victoria Rooms, also known as the Vic Rooms, which were designed as assembly rooms by Charles Dyer. Charles Dyer was a Bristol-born architect based in London who designed many buildings in and around Bristol between 1829 and 1841. The foundation stone was laid on 24 May 1838, the 19th birthday of Queen Victoria, in whose honour the building was named. The building, which is in Greek revival style, was completed in 1841. There is an eight-column Corinthian portico at the entrance, with a classical relief sculpture designed by Musgrave Watson above it. The construction is of dressed stonework, with a slate roof. A bronze statue of Edward VII was erected in 1912 at the front of the Victoria Rooms, together with a curved pool and several fountains with sculptures in the Art Nouveau style.
The building contains a 665-seat auditorium, a lecture theatre, recital rooms, rehearsal rooms and a recording studio. Its doors first opened to the public in May 1842, and for many years served as one of the most important and lively cultural centres in the West of England, hosting Charles Dickens who gave readings here from 1866 to 1869. Another famous visitor was Oscar Wilde, who lectured on Aesthetics. Another, Swedish opera singer Johanna Maria ‘Jenny’ Lind, often called the ‘Swedish Nightingale’, is one of the most highly regarded opera singers of the 19th century. She performed soprano roles in opera in Sweden and across Europe. In 1850, she was invited to America by showman P. T. Barnum and went on to give 93 large-scale concerts for him after which she continued to tour under her management earning her $350, 000 (equivalent to $12,900,820.51 in 2022). She gave much of this to charities such as Swedish schools and went on to have three children with her new husband. She finally settled here in 1855 and for some years she was a professor of singing at the Royal College of Music in London …
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