Wembley Arena started life as a swimming pool with no pillars
Before it hosted Queen, ABBA and Madonna, Wembley Arena was a swimming pool. Built for the 1934 British Empire Games and used for Olympic swimming and diving in 1948, it was designed by an engineer who worked without an architect. His cantilevered roof met in the middle, leaving a vast hall free of internal columns.
Sir Owen Williams carried the Empire Pool roof on three hinged arches of reinforced concrete, each 240 feet across, at the time the widest concrete span of any comparable building anywhere. He used unusually good concrete, which is why the structure has worn better than many far newer ones. Arthur Elvin commissioned it, work started in November 1933, and it opened the following July. The pool measured 200 feet by 60 and had a removable deck so it could double as an ice rink, and hockey arrived within months.
The building soon took on other roles. In 1940 it housed several hundred evacuees from Gibraltar, moved out while the fortress was braced for attack. After its last swim at the 1948 Olympics, which also brought boxing and water polo, it gradually became an entertainment venue. It won Grade II listing in 1976 for its engineering daring and was renamed Wembley Arena in 1978; sponsors have since relabelled it several times.
Its concert history is thick with records. In the mid-1960s the NME Poll Winners shows drew crowds of 10,000 to see the Beatles, with Roger Moore handing them an award. Dire Straits played 13 nights in a row in 1985. David Cassidy sold out six shows across a single weekend in 1973, amid scenes a television special labelled hysteria. ABBA's six nights in 1979 left Björn Ulvaeus comparing the crowd to coming home. Pearl Jam set the single-show attendance mark in 2007, with 12,470 people.
A £35 million refurbishment closed the hall for fourteen months from February 2005; Depeche Mode reopened it in April 2006, and the temporary pavilion that had filled in was shipped to Malta to become a conference centre. The venue returned to the Olympics in 2012 for badminton and rhythmic gymnastics. Cliff Richard has played there more than anyone.
Source: Wembley Arena
