![]() ![]() Three years later, the council acknowledged his achievements and Godfrey was appointed general manager of the Winter Gardens. ![]() The evening was a big success, and the band went on to perform three concerts a day throughout the coming summer months. ![]() The first concert to take place in the venue was performed on 22 nd May 1893 to an audience of approximately 10,000 people who crammed into the building, causing overcrowding. The new ensemble would be named the Bournemouth Corporation Band, and its home would be in the under utilised Winter Gardens. He was tasked with assembling a thirty strong band of musicians, supplying suitable clothing and organising a schedule of classical concerts. ![]() After a search to find an appropriate candidate, they handed a contract worth £95 a week to a twenty-four-year-old Londoner, Dan Godfrey, who came from a dynasty of distinguished bandmasters. In the early 1890s, the Bournemouth Council decided the town would benefit from a full-time group of musicians to entertain the locals and visiting holidaymakers. It was an enormous glass structure that housed a wide variety of shrubs and floral displays interspersed with exhibition space and areas for public entertainments. Opened on 16 th January 1877 by the MP Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, the original Crystal Palace and Winter Gardens was built on an open space called Cranbourne Gardens, once a favourite spot of the town’s founder, Lewis Tregonwell. ![]()
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