A historical monument with a beautiful, detailed interior, built in the 15th century and renovated in 1874.
Shodfriars Hall is the most striking timber-framed building in Boston at three storeys, looming near the eastern end of the Marketplace.

Though it looks like the quintessential Medieval Hall from the front, Pevsner rightly described it as a ‘ghost’ of a timber-framed construction as in reality the building was altered in the 17th-century and heavily reconstructed in the 19th century. It is instead made up of two buildings of different dates and utterly different styles that have been joined together: a 15th-century timber-framed structure, with some 14th-century fabric on the ground floor, and a large extension in red brick to the rear from the 1874 restoration works.

The 19th-century works were funded by the Boston Conservative Club, who commissioned George Gilbert Scott, the architect responsible for St Pancras Station and the Albert Memorial, to redesign the layout so it could be used as a grand music hall. The eastern red brick extension is clearly characteristic of his signature European Gothic style. The top storey was added to the timber frame section, and the roofline was completely reworked in the 19th-century to include the two gables that remain today. The decorative plaster roses on the exterior are a later addition made to look Medieval!

Even the name Shodfriars is a Victorian addition, given simply because the building sits on Shodfriars Lane. The term ‘Shodfriars’ is an old English slang word, along with ‘Blackfriars’, for the Dominican order of Monks, so-called because they wore long dark black robes and were allowed to wear shoes. The order founded a friary in Boston in 1222 but the rectory, now known as the Blackfriars Art Centre, is all that remains of the original monastic complex.

Rather than being of monastic origins the arcading on the ground floor would probably have been open onto the street, suggesting that Shodfriars was originally a guildhall perhaps for the Corpus Christi Guild, as open plan ground floors were a common feature of civic buildings at the time. The Corpus Christi Guild was a religious guild found all over the country with the purpose of celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi, a holy day in honour of the real presence of Jesus’s body in the Eucharistic Host.

After its construction, the rear of the hall became a stop on the regional theatre circuits hosting theatrical performances, though not for long runs, in-between dances, meetings and concerts.

Performances stopped in 1929 when the building was converted into a billiards hall. Its life in the 20th and 21st centuries seems to follow its tradition of varied use and has housed a snooker hall, restaurant shop and even a nightclub!

Did you know that it was on the Shodfriars stage that Britain’s first drag queen Arthur Lucan, known famously as ‘Old Mother Riley’ in the 30’s and 40’s, made his stage debut as a child?