Owners / Managers

George Adney Payne -1907

George Adney Payne may be considered an important pioneer of the music hall movement for it was he who went into partnership with Crowder who was the proprietor of the Britannia before it came under the Lanes, which links him with the pre-Morton halls. With Crowder, in 1878 he transformed Lusby's Summer Garden into the Paragon Music Hall.

In 1887 his company acquired the Canterbury and the two houses together held a panamount position among suburban music halls for a number of years. These later merged in a Syndicate which included the Oxford, Tivoly London Pavilion, and Metropolitan, and a number of other suburban halls, such as the Empress, Brixton, the Chelsea Palace, the South London, and the halls at East Ham and Walthamstow. Subsequently, as we have already noted, the Oxford, Canterbury, and Paragon were sold, together with the Tivoli.

Payne's career, began at the Greenwich Parthenon, influenced in its course most of the important London music halls. His death, as the result of a motor accident, occurred at Tunbridge Wells in 1907.

From EARLY DOORS by Harold Scott