Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue in London, located in Rosebery Avenue, Islington. The present-day theatre is the sixth on the site. Sadler's Wells grew out of a late 17th-century pleasure garden and was opened as a theatre building in the 1680s.
Lacking the requisite licence to perform straight drama, the house became known for dancing, performing animals, pantomime, and spectacular entertainments such as sea battles in a huge water tank on the stage. In the mid-19th century, when the law was changed to remove restrictions on staging drama, Sadler's Wells became celebrated for the seasons of plays by Shakespeare and others presented by Samuel Phelps between 1844 and 1862. From then until the early 20th century the theatre had mixed fortunes, eventually becoming abandoned and derelict.
The philanthropist and theatre owner Lilian Baylis bought and rebuilt the theatre in 1926. Together with Baylis's Old Vic, Sadler's Wells became home to dance, drama and opera companies that developed into the Royal Ballet, the National Theatre and English National Opera. From the 1930s to the 1980s the theatre was home to 21 London seasons by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company; from the 1950s to the 1970s the English Opera Group, founded by Benjamin Britten, had its London base at Sadler's Wells; and between the 1950s and 1980s the Handel Opera Society staged productions there. Visiting dance troupes included the Alvin Ailey and Merce Cunningham companies, the Dance Theatre of Harlem, London Contemporary Dance Theatre and the Ballet Rambert.
The current theatre dates from 1998. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500-seat main auditorium and the Lilian Baylis Studio, with extensive rehearsal rooms and technical facilities also housed within the site. Sadler's Wells is now chiefly known as a dance venue. As well as hosting visiting companies, the theatre is also a producing house, with associated artists and companies who create original works for the theatre. Sadler's Wells maintains an additional base at the Peacock Theatre in the West End as well as opening a new theatre, Sadler's Wells East Theatre, in Stratford, London in 2025.
History First theatre: 1683–1765 Details of the origins of Sadler's Wells are disputed. According to Dennis Arundell in his history of the theatre, its founder was called Dick Sadler.Arundell, p. 2 Many other sources, from the 18th century onwards, say the same,Carey, p. 105; Craine and Mackrell, p. 380; Jarman, p. 3; Rice, p. 67; Thomson, p. 128; and Urban, p. 798 but others give Sadler the forename Thomas,Hembry, p. 99; Law, p. 443; and Pinks and Wood, p. 760Hartnoll, Phyllis and Peter Found. "Sadler's Wells Theatre", The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre, Oxford University Press, 2003 and according to the Survey of London he was Edward.Temple, p. 141 It is also uncertain when Sadler established his auditorium: many sources give the year as 1683;Carey, p. 105; Craine and Mackrell, p. 380; Jarman, p. 3; Rice, p. 67; and Urban, p. 798 others give it as 1684 or 1685.Thomson, p. 128 According to Arundell, Sadler had already opened his "Musick-House" at an unspecified date before 1683; a history of the house published in 1847 confines itself to saying that the house was built at some time after the creation of the adjoining New River in 1614."Sadler's Wells", The Theatrical Times, 5 June 1847, pp. 172–174
A well with water from a mineral spring was discovered on Sadler's land in Islington, near the boundary with Clerkenwell. After an eminent physician tested the water and praised its supposed health-giving properties, Sadler found two more wells nearby. Taking the waters was fashionable at the time – there were popular spas at Bath, Tunbridge and EpsomAddison, p. 4 – and Sadler started marketing the water from his wells. Visitors to the Musick-House began to drink it, and many London physicians recommended their patients to do so. By the end of the summer of 1685 five or six hundred people frequented the Musick-House every morning for the water.Arundell, pp. 2–3 Sadler laid out ornamental gardens and engaged entertainers to amuse his patrons: there were tumblers, rope-dancers and musicians. Sadler took as his business partner a violinist, Francis Forcer, who was both dancing-master and composer.Arundell, p. 4
The initial popularity of Sadler's spa did not last long, and by 1691 it had ceased to be a fashionable resort. He sold two of his wells, and the original one dried up for a time; his entertainments became the main draw for those of the public still interested.Arundell, p. 6 There is no documentary proof, but Arundell conjectures that by 1697 Sadler had either died or retired; Forcer went into partnership with a glover, James Miles, and the wooden auditorium was renamed "Miles's Musick-House". Under their management the public could hear ballad singers and see jugglers, wrestlers, fighters, dancing dogs and, according to the theatre's 21st-century historian, "even a singing duck".Crompton, Sarah. "History" , Sadler's Wells Theatre. Retrieved 9 June 2023
In the early years of the 18th century the reputation of the spa declined. By the time Hogarth produced his Four Times of the Day series in 1736, the theatre had lost any vestiges of fashionability and was satirised as having an audience consisting of tradesmen and their pretentious wives. Ned Ward described the clientele in 1699 as:
The proprietors advertised for a new manager in 1700, but the decline continued. In 1711, after its fashionable clients had taken their trade elsewhere, Sadler's Wells was described in The Inquisitor as "a nursery of debauchery",Highfill et al., p. 224 and the place was frequented by many "unaccountable and disorderly" people.Arundell, p. 8 In 1712 a man called French was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for killing a Mr Thwaits at Sadler's Wells.Temple, p. 144; and "London, Sept. 13", Flying Post, 13 September 1712, p. 2
Miles died in 1724,"News", Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, 18 April 1724, p. 4 and under Forcer's son the auditorium was "entirely new modelled and made every way more commodious than heretofore for the better reception of company".Arundell, p. 11 Forcer junior sought to improve standards – according to one historian he "succeeded, to a great degree," in driving away "the mass of incomprehensible vagabonds" – but after his death in 1743 John Warren took over, and standards fell again, to the extent that the authorities closed the place. The lease was acquired by Thomas Rosoman and Peter Hough, who reopened Sadler's Wells in April 1746. According to Arundell they "thereby started twenty years' prosperity for the old wooden theatre".Arundell, p. 15 Rosoman substantially reconstructed the wooden building in 1748–49.Temple, p. 147
Rosoman engaged a regular resident company of actors, and the old Musick-House became a theatre. Rosoman introduced burlettas, at that time a genre new to England."Sadler's Wells", The Theatrical Times, 12 June 1847, pp. 182–183 According to the current laws, only the two patent companies were permitted to present non-musical dramas.Kinservik, Matthew "patent theatres", Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Oxford University Press, 2005 Sadler's Wells and other theatres were obliged by the Minor Theatres Act (1751) to avoid spoken dialogue. To circumvent this rule, theatre managers had their actors speaking against a continuous background of instrumental music, so that it was passed off as a musical entertainment. In general the authorities did not enforce the letter of the law with particular rigour.Thompson, pp. 129–130 The Tempest was performed there in 1764, but Arundell suggests it was not Shakespeare's original, but "Garrick's version of the Dryden-Shakespeare-Purcell work castrated into an opera".Arundell, p. 23
In 1763 Rosoman engaged the dancers from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. This suited both theatres, as at that time Sadler's Wells customarily opened from late spring to early autumn and the patent theatres were open for the other half of the year. Arundell comments that this engagement added to the prestige of Sadler's Wells "and ultimately benefited the place enormously, for the new Ballet Master was Giuseppe Grimaldi". (Grimaldi's son, Joseph, later became one of Sadler's Wells's star attractions.) Rosoman prospered and in the summer of 1764 he announced that Sadler's Wells would be pulled down at the end of the season and rebuilt "in a most elegant manner".Arundell, p. 24
Second theatre: 1765–1802
Rosoman was a builder by trade, and he had the wooden theatre replaced with a brick structure. The new building was completed in seven weeks, and cost £4,225; it opened in April 1765. The new house was well received: a London newspaper reported, "Sadler's Wells is now rebuilt and considerably enlarged; each of the entrances is decorated with an elegant iron gate and pallisades [with] a degree of splendor and magnificence ... that do equal honour to the taste and liberality of the Proprietor"."News", Lloyd's Evening Post, 6 March 1765, p. 7; and "News", Lloyd's Evening Post, 12 April 1765, p. 3
In 1771 Rosoman retired. He sold his three-quarter share in the theatre to Thomas King, a friend and Drury Lane colleague of Garrick. King took over the management from December 1771, and continued to offer entertainments of the traditional variety – tumblers, singers, acrobats and "Several surprising and pleasing Performances by Messrs Sigels, lately arrived from Paris"."Sadler's Wells", Public Advertiser, 25 May 1774, p. 1 Although his own tastes favoured the dramatic, King catered for the tastes of his audiences, and in particular featured pantomimes, establishing the theatre as a rival to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in that genre.Arundell, p. 29 His shows, with music by Charles Dibdin, included such pieces as Vineyard Revels, or, The Harlequin Bacchanal,"Sadler's Wells", The Morning Chronicle 3 May 1773, p. 1 and The Whim-Wham, or, Harlequin Captive."Sadler's Wells", Public Advertiser, 23 August 1773, p. 5 In 1781 Joseph Grimaldi made his debut, aged two, dancing with his sister.Arundell, p. 34
In the 1790s Dibdin was stage manager as well as composer, with Grimaldi as comic star.Arundell, pp. 54–55 The theatre was by now in need of renovation, not least because of concerns about safety. The proprietors, led by William Siddons, husband of Sarah Siddons, proposed "an Entire new inside" so that "the Building will be a stable one for fifty years to come".Arundell, p. 64
Third theatre: 1802–1879
Sadler's Wells reopened in 1802 with an interior "entirely re-built at an immense Expence".Advertisement, True Briton, 17 April 1802, p. 1 In 1804 it acquired a new attraction, dubbed the Aqua-show. A huge water tank was installed under the stage for the production of aquatic spectacles. This tank and a second, above the stage to provide waterfall effects, were supplied with water from the New River alongside the theatre. The historian Shirley S. Allen writes that such was the remarkable realism in the performance of sea stories that Sadler's Wells became for thirty years the home of the "nautical drama". Grimaldi, by the early 19th century established as "the unchallenged king of clowns",Moody, Jane. "Grimaldi, Joseph (Joe) (1778–1837), actor and pantomimist", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2014 continued as the theatre's principal clown until 1820, while pursuing a parallel career at Drury Lane.