Death of Musical Coalman Thomas Britton

There was plenty of music in Restoration London, but for those in the know the best place for serious recitals was a room above a small coal shop in Clerkenwell.

Founded by coal merchant Thomas Britton in 1678, the concert series was among the first of its kind. It ran every Thursday for nearly 40 years. Handel reportedly performed there on arriving in London in 1711. Sir Roger L’Estrange, the government’s censor, played often on the viol.

Access was via external stairs which ‘could scarce be ascended without crawling’. The room’s one window was ‘little bigger than the bunghole of a cask’; in summer, the audience stewed ‘like sweaty dancers at a buttock-ball’. But still people came – ‘the old, the young, the gay and the fair of all rank, including the highest order of nobility’.

One amateur performer, a magistrate, had a penchant for practical jokes. He persuaded a friend – Samuel Honeyman, a blacksmith nicknamed the ‘Talking Smith’ for his gift for ventriloquism – to visit Britton, now aged 70. Britton heard the voice of God, coming from nowhere, pronouncing his imminent death. Terrified, he fell to his knees in prayer. He never recovered, dying soon after on 27 September 1714.