place

Burroughes Hall

Snooker in EnglandSnooker venuesSports venues completed in 1903
Burroughes & Watts label from billiard table at Olveston Historic Home
Burroughes & Watts label from billiard table at Olveston Historic Home

Burroughes Hall was an important billiards and snooker venue in Soho Square, London from 1903 until it closed in 1967. The hall was in the premises of Burroughes & Watts Ltd., who had been at 19 Soho Square since 1836. Burroughes & Watts opened a new billiards saloon in 1903, known as the Soho Square Saloon. This was re-opened as the Soho Square Hall in 1904 and was renamed Burroughes Hall in 1913. In 1967, control of Burroughes & Watts Ltd. was taken over by a group of property developers. The assets included 19 Soho Square, which was demolished and replaced by a modern office block. In 1919 Burroughes & Watts opened a second London match-room in Piccadilly, generally called the New Burroughes Hall. This venture was not a financial success and the new venue closed in 1925. During this period, the hall in Soho Square was sometimes known as the Old Burroughes Hall.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Burroughes Hall (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Burroughes Hall
Soho Square, City of Westminster Soho

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Burroughes HallContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.515833333333 ° E -0.13166666666667 °
placeShow on map

Address

Soho Square 17-19
W1D 3QN City of Westminster, Soho
England, United Kingdom
mapOpen on Google Maps

Burroughes & Watts label from billiard table at Olveston Historic Home
Burroughes & Watts label from billiard table at Olveston Historic Home
Share experience

Nearby Places

Soho Square
Soho Square

Soho Square is a garden square in Soho, London, hosting since 1954 a de facto public park let by the Soho Square Garden Committee to Westminster City Council. It was originally called King Square after Charles II, and a much weathered statue of the monarch has stood in the square, with an extended interruption, since 1661, one year after the restoration of the monarchy. Of the square's 30 buildings (including mergers), 16 are listed (have statutory recognition and protection). During the summer, Soho Square hosts open-air free concerts. By the time of the drawing of a keynote map of London in 1746 the newer name for the square had gained sway. The central garden and some buildings were owned by the Howard de Walden Estate, main heir to the Dukedom of Portland's great London estates.At its centre is a listed mock "market cross" building, completed in 1926 to hide the above-ground features of a contemporary electricity substation; small, octagonal, with Tudorbethan timber framing. During the king's statue's absence through intercession of resident business Crosse & Blackwell it was a private garden feature at Grim's Dyke, a country house where it was kept by painter Frederick Goodall then by dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator W. S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. Initial residents were relatively significant landowners and merchants. Some of the square remains residential. From the 1820s to the 1860s, at least eleven artists recently qualified for major exhibitions were resident aside from permanent residents, some of whom were more accomplished artists, as comprised in the local rate books; by the end of that century charities, music, art and other creative design businesses had taken several premises along the square. A legacy of creative design and philanthropic occupants lingers including the British Board of Film Classification, 20th Century Studios UK, Dolby Europe Ltd, Tiger Aspect Productions, Saint Patrick's Catholic Church which provides many social outreach projects to local homeless and addicts, the French Protestant Church of London (by architect Aston Webb) and the House of St Barnabas, a members' club since 2013, which fundraises and hosts events and exhibitions for homelessness-linked good causes.

Tottenham Court Road chiller

In the 1930s, London Transport Board installed an experimental refrigeration plant on the London Underground at Tottenham Court Road Underground station. The plant was operational between 1938 and 1949. The experimental plant was built because temperature measurements through the 1930s showed that the Underground was steadily getting warmer. Although the temperatures were not at unsafe levels (peaks of 82 °F / 27.8 °C occurred at a few stations in summertime), the LTB perceived that if the trend continued, cooling in summer would be required at some time in the future, and it would be sensible to develop suitable technology. The chiller used water as the working fluid. The evaporators consisted of indirect heat exchangers mounted in the platform tunnels which were fed water at just above 0 °C. The condenser was sited in the outflow air path of an existing tunnel cooling fan, which had been installed in a disused lift shaft at the station in 1933. The outgoing air going through the condenser was warmed by 2–3 °C, before being discharged to atmosphere. Two descriptions of the cooling capacity exist. The first (from 1939) gives the capacity as "about half a million British thermal units per hour." The second (1982) states that it was "equivalent to melting approximately 51 tonnes of ice per day." In SI units, these are 146 kW and 197 kW respectively. The experimental plant was not considered a success, mainly because the cooling it provided was at high cost. An extractor fan of the same cooling capacity ('cooling capacity' in the sense that a fan removes warm air in the tunnels and replaces it with cooler air from outside) used up one-eighth of the electricity of the experimental refrigeration plant. Not only that, such a fan was easier to maintain and cost less to install. In the austere post-war years, the electrical power drawn by the chiller could not be justified. It was used intermittently during the 1940s, and was decommissioned in 1949.