Hallé-lujah! Hanley on the Free Trade Hall.
Nymphs, shepherds and the Dalai Lama's backstage rider. Cult Manchester guest writer Paul Hanley returns with a celebration of Manchester’s Free Trade Hall.
After my recent article for Cult Manchester about my top ten Manchester venues, a few people messaged me to say they were puzzled by the glaring omission of the Free Trade Hall, and I can certainly see why. The main reason for the omission is that it’s one of two Manchester venues that I wanted to devote a bit more space to (the other being the Band on the Wall, and I wrote a whole monograph about that).
For a start, the very ground the Free Trade Hall is built on is woven into the fabric of Manchester history - a sacred space, in many ways. This is because on Monday 16 August 1819, eighteen people were killed there, and around 700 were injured, when the cavalry of the Yeomanry charged with sabres drawn into a gathering on St Peter’s Field. An utterly unjustified attack on 60,000 peaceful demonstrators - men, women and children who had come together to ask, not unreasonably, why the whole of Lancashire had the same number of MPs as Dunwich, a small town in Suffolk that had mostly fallen into the sea some years before.
The Free Trade Hall, built on the site of Peterloo and funded by public conscription, opened in 1856. Its purpose was to commemorate both the massacre and the recent repeal of the notorious Corn Laws, an act of parliament primarily designed to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. It wasn’t the last.
Benjamin Disraeli spoke at the Free Trade Hall on 2 April 1872, apparently fuelled by two bottles of white brandy. In the future, he promised public health, sanitation, decent factory conditions and food for the hungry would take priority over vested interests. We’re still waiting.
For many years the hall was the home of the still-renowned Hallé Orchestra, and in June 1929 it was the venue for the recording of ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’ by the Hallé and the Manchester Children’s Choir. This was the UK’s first significant recording outside of the capital and remained so until 10cc built Strawberry Studios 40 years later. It sold a million copies and Victoria Wood wrote a musical about it.
Like the Palace Theatre and the Royal Exchange, the Free Trade Hall was heavily damaged by the Manchester Blitz in 1940, and lay dormant for the next 11 years, before being reopened as a concert hall in November 1951. The Queen did the honours, her husband King George VI being gravely ill – he was dead within three months. The Hallé (who else) kicked off the venue’s renaissance, with orchestras and jazz bands being the main source of entertainment for the next few years. Jazz legends George Melly and Humphrey Lyttleton both played within a year of the venue reopening.
Somewhat inevitably, rock 'n' roll started muscling its way onto the Free Trade Hall stage in the late 50s - beginning with two artists who, in their own ways, both revolutionised popular music. Lonnie Donegan, the north star of the skiffle boom that inspired many of the nation’s youth, including John Lennon and Paul McCartney, played in February 1957. And Gibson-toting, ballgown-sporting Sister Rosetta Tharpe, described by CP Lee as ‘far more influential than the Sex Pistols’, played twice, in December 1957 and May 1958, some seven years before her seminal performance at Wilbraham Road railway station (she played the Free Trade Hall then as well).
They were inevitably followed by Cliff, Marty Wilde and Wee Willie Harris, who, while maybe not quite so seminal, were the best the UK had to offer at that time. The venue’s flirtation with this thrilling new genre was short lived - in 1960 Billy Fury cancelled an appearance due to flu, which wasn’t revealed until minutes before he was due on stage. The announcement caused a riot that got rock 'n' roll effectively banned from the venue for years. This meant that The Beatles had to look elsewhere for suitable venues and never played there.
Six years after Billy Fury’s no-show, someone finally brought rock and roll roaring back to the stage of the Free Trade Hall in no uncertain terms. That night caused some disturbance as well. Bob Dylan had played an acoustic set in 1965 which passed without incident, but his gig in 1966, or at least the second half of it, is the stuff of legend. It’s one of three gigs that are almost synonymous with the venue. Suffice it to say that the hype around this concert is utterly justified, and neither the crowd nor the Free Trade Hall’s acoustics knew what had hit them. I recommend you listen to the set, and if you do, don’t forget to ‘play it fucking loud’. As a direct result of the furore surrounding this concert, for the next three years it was back to classical, folk and jazz, with the odd bit of country and western thrown in. In 1969 Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd ushered rock music back through the Free Trade Hall’s doors just in time for the 70s.
After that, every rock group of note graced its stage. Quite how the venue turned a profit is something of a mystery, as going by the recollections of Marc Riley, Steve Hanley, Mick Rossi, Johnny Marr, Billy Duffy and countless others, the Free Trade Hall wasn’t exactly Fort Knox when it came to securing its doors. Sneaking in was the order of the day - whether through rushing the doors, clambering through windows or securing positions as Donovan’s carpet roadies (true story - Marc Riley and Craig Scanlon, it was), to pay was to fail. Gigs like Mott the Hoople supported by Queen, Bowie’s appearance a week before ‘Starman’ was released and Lou Reed’s Transformer tour saw the next generation of Manchester musicians all congregating beneath the Hall’s Italianate roof years before they gathered in its second-floor venue for 'those' two gigs in 1976.
Can I assume we all know about the two Sex Pistols gigs in 1976? If not, there are documentaries, movies, cross stitches and books dedicated to their memory, so I won’t rehash the story here. If the words ‘Nantucket Sleighride’ mean nothing to you I suggest you do some homework.
Though I was too young to attend either of the Pistols gigs, I did manage to get to the Free Trade Hall myself in 1976 - my secondary school, St Bede’s, held their annual prize giving ceremony there. I didn’t win one at any of the five I attended, of course. The first actual concert I saw there was Darts, the sightly odd doo-woppers that were inexplicably huge for a brief moment in 1978. They were, if nothing else, good value for money - there was about twelve of them. I also saw Blondie later that year, on the Parallel Lines tour, a fantastic evening. I got to play the Lesser Free Trade Hall at the end of 1982, a gig that turned out to be Marc Riley’s final appearance with The Fall.
Gigs at the Free Trade Hall grew less frequent in the 80s - in 1984 there were only twenty, one of which was an evening with Doris Stokes, so we can safely say there were charlatans on stage in Manchester long before Tim Burgess and Rob Collins got together. The Smiths, The Fall and Happy Mondays clearly had a soft spot for the place, and they continued to play there even as the number of gigs that could be classed as ‘rock’ dwindled to almost nothing.
The final gig at The Free Trade Hall was on 21 July 1996 - a tribute to Norman George, a violinist with the Northern Dance Orchestra. Two days earlier, none other than the Dalai Lama had taken to the stage. One can only wonder what his backstage rider looked like.
Disgustingly, and despite the protestations of many, including Deputy PM John Prescott, following its closure the Free Trade Hall was turned into a Radisson Hotel. Obviously, the venue was in trouble, but surely something could have been done to preserve it for the city? The rampant cultural vandalism, and disregard for civic history, that saw Manchester council instead opt to turn a quick buck was best described by architectural historian John Archer in 2001:
I think we all know the answer to that one.
Further reading:
For a full list of performances at the Free Trade Hall (and much more besides), I can heartily recommend Were You There? (2020) by Richard Lysons. This article wouldn’t have been possible without it. It’s also the source of the brilliant quote at the end.
Also:
Like The Night Rebound (2026) - CP Lee
I Swear I Was There (2016) - David Nolan (whatever happened to him?)
Anarchy in the Year Zero (2016) - Clinton Heylin
Punk Rock - an Oral History (2006) - John Robb
I’m also going to plug Leave the Capital (2017), Sixteen Again (2024) and Das Gruppe on the Wall (2026), because if you’ve got this far you can’t think my writing is that bad, can you?
Paul's books are available here.
