The many lives of Sadler’s Wells

The Sadler’s Wells story begins in 1683 when a mineral spring was discovered in the garden of a ‘musick house’ built by Richard Sadler. Sadler eyed a new business opportunity. He claimed the waters were effective against “dropsy, jaundice, scurvy, green sickness and other distempers to which females are liable”. Around 500 fashionable Londoners per day came to the spa for a taste.

By the 1700s, entertainment at Sadler’s Wells had expanded to include dancers, jugglers, wrestlers, dancing dogs, tumblers – even a singing duck. Its medicinal waters were now used to brew beer. Fashionable crowds had been replaced by, as one 1699 source claims, “vermin trained up to the gallows”. In 1711, another source called Sadler’s Wells “a nursery of debauchery”. The venue was in decline.

Sadler’s Wells’ fortunes changed in the second half of the 1700s when the theatre was restored and rebuilt. It was a place to watch opera, pantomime, patriotic plays and pageants. London’s top clown, Joseph Grimaldi, performed there regularly, choosing the venue for one of his final benefit shows in 1828. Famous actor Edmund Kean also appeared on stage there as a child in 1801.

In 1804, a big metal tank was installed under the stage so that scenes could be performed on water. It wasn’t London’s first aquatic theatre – one in Piccadilly featured water effects before – but Sadlers’ Wells took it to a new level. You’d see ships and sea creatures bobbing in the water among the reflections of fireworks and flames. The theatre staged 36 aqua-dramas between 1804 and 1824.

The 1800s saw a succession of managers and programmes at Sadler’s Wells, including a successful run of William Shakespeare plays. But the theatre found itself in trouble again, and by the 1900s, it had been used as a roller skating rink, a music hall, a cinema and, reportedly, a pickle factory for a short while. “Poor wounded old playhouse!” one critic exclaimed in 1914. The building shut in 1915.

In 1925, Lilian Baylis, manager of the Old Vic theatre in Lambeth, started a campaign to reopen the derelict Sadler’s Wells. A believer that art should belong to everyone, Baylis wanted Londoners north of the River Thames to enjoy the same opportunities as those south of it. A newly built theatre opened in 1931 and the next decades saw ballet and opera companies settle there.

Dance became the jewel of Sadler’s Wells’ crown in the 1900s. In the 1990s, it was rebuilt into a purpose-built dance theatre with up-to-date equipment, an expanded sprung stage, rehearsal rooms and a smaller studio theatre for development and small-scale productions. The design incorporated the skeleton of the 1931 theatre, which also included bricks from the Victorian playhouse.

The present building – the sixth Sadler’s Wells space in total – opened in 1998. Over more than 350 years, the theatre has survived redevelopment, financial troubles and, on a number of occasions, the threat of permanent closure. Today, it stands tall as one of the city’s top destinations for dance. In 2024, it opened a new theatre in the Olympic Park in Stratford.