Archive

A cacophony of voices yelling ‘Open the box!’, or ‘Take the money!’ was a regular feature of the popular quiz show Take Your Pick in the 1950s and 60s, as the studio audience urged the contestant either to accept a cash prize or to open a box that would reveal whether they had won a car, washing machine, holiday — or a mousetrap or some such (come to think of it, it was a bit like Deal or No Deal but without the mumbo jumbo). Well, as a volunteer helping to catalogue Wilton’s archive, I have opted squarely for opening boxes. And I am being amply rewarded for it.

There are over 70 boxes of archive material from Wilton’s various incarnations, and I am one of ten volunteers, so I will only have seen a fraction of the total, but my brief conversations with fellow volunteers confirm my own experience: most boxes yield treasures of some sort.

Yes, they are dry and dusty (the boxes, that is, not the volunteers), and cataloguing may have a decidedly fusty image, but every box has the potential for surprise and excitement, as you never know what you are going to find next. Some, it’s clear from the moment you take the lid off, contain an intriguing mixture of old programmes, flyers and photos, but even the boxes whose contents look like any old office filing turn out to be worth exploring.

For me, the biggest eye-opener has been finding out about Lt Walter Cole, leader of a highly successful ventriloquist troupe, linguist, and the first person to tour Britain with a cinematograph. The first box I opened contained a photo of him and his troupe, and their ventriloquist’s dummies (at least one of which was decidedly non-PC), and a photocopy of his obituary from The Gazette of 12 February 1932, 28 years after his retirement, confirms his status as ventriloquist to royalty and a thorough-going Edwardian celeb.

Some of the boxes contain rather random assortments of items from different periods: a sort of lucky dip from Wilton’s chequered history. But those that gather together all the papers, say, from a particular production give the unfolding — and riveting — story of creative endeavour, right from tentative proposals to rave reviews in the press. It’s all there: the approaches to actors and musicians, the artistic deliberations about scripts, the rehearsal notes, the performance records, even the fan letters. Here are directors changing their minds, props being sent flying into the audience by over-emphatic flouncing off stage, and music cues missed because the audience are clapping too loudly. It’s pure showbiz…

As with any artistic enterprise, money worries have loomed large, and the correspondence sometimes reveals the thrilling high-wire act attempted by anyone running a creative endeavour, but it also lays bare the unsung generosity of both corporations and individuals (and even, in a distant halcyon past, public bodies).

Alongside all the papers there are many photos of Wilton’s and its environs in various waves and phases of their development. In the past there seems to have been a certain amount of random, unrecorded rearranging of the building, with the result that unexpected doorways and passages are likely to turn up. But, stoutly supported by its beautiful barley twist columns and less decorous sleepers from the old London and Blackwall Railway, Wilton’s remains serenely resilient, untroubled by the swing from anything-goes music hall to straight-laced mission hall in the 19th century, miraculously untouched by bombs during the Blitz, and returning as a pocket-size opera house and adventurous performance space at the turn of the 21st century.

I’m sad to have come to the end of my boxes, but it’s great to think that all the treasures will be much easier to get at in the future.