CROYDON CHRONICLES: A talented musician established a business that over the course of 60 years taught and encouraged at least 30,000 youngsters to sing, play an instrument or perform on stage. DAVID MORGAN looks at the life and career of Gilbert Matthers
Croydon has a long and distinguished tradition in classical music. Mendelssohn came and played the organ at the Parish Church in June 1832. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and William Hurlstone were noted Croydon-based composers of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
During the 1960s and 70s the London Philharmonic Orchestra played regularly at the Fairfield Halls, a venue with a superb acoustic.
The Croydon Philharmonic Choir under the baton of Alan Kirby was considered to be the very best at interpreting the music of Edward Elgar in the 1930s. They also sang at two Prom concerts at the Royal Albert Hall.
More recently, the Trinity School Boys’ Choir has gained international renown, while the Croydon Minster choir have performed on both television and radio.
One name that deserves to be recalled alongside all those is Gilbert Matthers.
On September 3 1899, Matthers opened a music school at 116 Bensham Manor Road. He would train and encourage tens of thousands of young people into classical music for many years to come.
Born in Mitcham in 1869, Matthers went to school in Croydon and studied music with several well-known musicians of the time. He attended the Croydon Conservatoire of Music in Wellesley Road. He developed a fine baritone voice and was a first-rate pianist.
Local news: pupils at Matthers’ music schools attracted much attention in the local press
In the 1890s, Matthers earned his living touring the country singing in classical concerts. After he married Mary Wise in November 1894, they set up home in a house on Frant Road, Thornton Heath: Kenilworth. It was from here that Matthers advertised for pupils. He offered piano lessons at his house or where the pupils lived. He was also advertising his own musical talents, looking for concert engagements for himself and his most gifted pupils.
Piano lessons were also offered at Dewey’s Music Warehouse, 24 High Street in Sutton, where the cost of 12 lessons was a guinea – £1 1s, the equivalent of £180 today.
Music for all occasions was Matthers’ way of maximising his income. A concert or dance band could be hired for “moderate rates” with varying numbers of musicians to suit the occasion. Or the client could hire a single pianist for an evening’s soiree.
Matthers’ business struggled initially. There was a lot of competition from music teachers in the town. In the small ads column of the Croydon Guardian for January 1900, there were 21 other advertisements placed by music teachers.
Matthers managed to get his music school flourishing, perhaps because of diversifying. Not only did he offer music lessons on any instrument, he developed courses in elocution and public speaking, as well as drawing and painting. Ads described Matthers’ school as a “Conservatoire of Music and Art”.
Maestro: Gilbert Matthers operated music schools across London, employing up to 30 ‘professors’
Matthers opened more schools in Croydon in 1904, in Streatham at 248 Streatham High Road in 1908, in Bond Street in London in 1920 and in Wallington, at Hillcrest, opposite the town hall, in 1932.
His Bensham Manor home eventually became too small for his requirements so he transferred to Brigstock Road in 1930.
Matthers, the performer, was making a mark in the town, too. In March 1901 he was giving musical interludes on the piano in between talks for the Croydon Camera Club’s final day of its exhibition that year.
In January 1904, Matthers held his own art exhibition in Bensham Manor Road, with Walter W Adcock, the school’s art master, contributing more than 100 of his paintings and drawings. Matthers provided background music on the piano as guests toured the exhibition.
It wasn’t long before Matthers started to see some excellent results from his pupils. In July 1904 he entered four students in the London College of Music exams. Theresa Chipperfield, Constance Blow, Alice Riddle and Elsie Adderley set a very high bar for others to follow, just as Matthers would have wanted.
Gladys Bere and Florence Boggust followed on with this success a few months later.
The Croydon centre, opened in 1904, was at 69 North End in rooms above Berenger and Strohmenger, piano makers. The Matthers Junior String Orchestra was still meeting at this venue in 1909. The cost of sending your child to the orchestra was five shillings a term (something like £25 today). The sheet music was provided at no extra charge.
The local newspapers became full of short reports from the school about how well pupils had achieved. This must surely have helped recruitment.
On song: an advertisement for Matthers’ music schools from 1917
From September 1904, Monday evenings in Matthers’ diary were reserved for choir practice. The conservatoire choir met at 8.30pm to sing cantatas and part songs. The fee for the term was 2/6d (half a crown). You didn’t need to be a pupils to be accepted into the choir.
The first boys to achieve well were mentioned in 1906 when Leonard Warner and Reginald Crowe passed their piano exams. By March of that year, Matthers’ Croydon base had moved to 104 High Street, over what was then FA Wilson’s pianoforte showroom (the site is to the south of the Croydon Flyover). In Matthers’ regular advertisements, it said there were now more than 30 “professors” employed to teach his music courses.
Fees in 1906 were as follows; singing, piano and violin 1 to 3½ guineas a term, with children from 12s 6d; Mandolin banjo was also 12s 6d.
An initiative for 1907 was that each pupil was to receive a mark from their teacher, as well as a comment, after every session, so that parents could see the progress their children were making.
Matthers’ music school remained open and functioning throughout the four years of the Great War, with an ad from 1919 showed he was endeavouring to give a boost to his business now hostilities were at an end.
In his promotion, Matthers was offering music, elocution and drama sessions together with art lessons for both adults and children. His prices had gone up, £1 11s 6d per term for adults (around £130 in today’s values), with childrens’ prices raised to 15 shillings per term. Adult drama classes were priced at £2 2s 6d, but with a promise that all members would be given speaking parts in their productions.
Matthers’ school productions were to become quite a feature of Croydon society in the 1920s and ’30s. Matthers wrote for the stage, too, and in February 1921 at the Croydon Public Hall there was a first production of his play The White Star. The teacher in charge of elocution lessons, Margy Macdonald Marti, played the lead role of The Star Lord.
Matthers’ orchestras were to play at the performance, with more than 100 instrumentalists participating.
The previous evening at the Public Hall saw Matthers’ drama group perform The Blue Bird, a play in six acts by Maurice Maeterlinck.
Many concerts and performances followed in the Public Hall, a popular venue in the 1800s and early 20th Century, on the corner of George Street and Wellesley Road, which was demolished after World War II.
Headline news: Gilbert Matthers died in in 1937, aged 68
The 35th anniversary concert held in 1934 was well-attended and Gilbert Matthers, by now 65 years old, was still in charge of the baton.
The strain of running such an organisation, however, was beginning to take its toll.
Early in 1937, Matthers went into a nursing home. His wife had died a couple of years earlier and his ill-health had gradually got the better of him. His last public performance came when he conducted his orchestra in October 1936 at St Stephen’s Church in Thornton Heath, an event to raise money for their church funds.
Just three days after he announced his retirement in June 1937 and that his son Bernard would take over the role as school principal, Matthers died. His funeral was held at St Andrews Catholic Church in Thornton Heath and he was interred in a grave in Queen’s Road Cemetery.
Life remembered: at one point, Gilbert Matthers was running five music colleges
Bernard Matthers built on his father’s legacy. He did not stay to continue teaching during the Second World War, though. He worked for the BBC for part of that time. He was in charge of overseas music programmes on the radio, before becoming a senior civil servant working on such projects as PLUTO ( Pipeline Under The Ocean) and the Mulberry Harbours, in preparation for the 1944 D-Day landings.
One of the new features in the school after the war was the use of recording equipment. Instrumental performances and dramatic scenes could be analysed and dissected in a more detailed way. When Bernard Matthers was interviewed as part of the 50 years celebration of the school, he recorded his conversation with the reporter, who thought it quite novel.
During this interview, Matthers said that he worked out that more than 30,000 students had passed through the doors of the school since it had opened in 1899. More than 1,000 young people sat for their Associated Board music exams in that time; only 23 had failed to pass.
One pupil, Mabel Hunt, had gone on to sing with the Carl Rosa Opera Company and another, Ena Dell, had astonished concert audiences from the age of 12 with her virtuoso piano playing.
In the Matthers music school’s 50th year in 1949, between 350 and 400 students attended weekly lessons and musical groups, some coming from more than 25 miles away. A staff of 20 teachers was employed.
The Matthers school carried on into the 1960s. One of the last newspaper advertisements was placed in November 1962 when they were trying fill places on a classical guitar course.
By then, many children were singing in choirs and playing in orchestras run by their school teachers, and so the need for a specialist school such as Matthers had declined.
Nevertheless, over eight decades, father Gilbert and son Bernard Matthers taught and encouraged, applauded and appreciated young people performing classical music in Croydon.
The gift of music can go a long way.
David Morgan has been chronicling Croydon’s history for Inside Croydon for more than a decade. Morgan is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- Teacher whose poetry saw ‘The Merry Gang’ visiting Croydon
- How sci-fi author John Munro died as a hermit in Croydon
- Pioneer of sociology whose book called for an evolution
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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