Texas Venue Directory
London Dance Hall
Historic rural dance hall · London
Historic Kimble County dance hall continuing selected public events and traditional Texas dance-hall use.
About this room
Len L. Lewis, a horse trader and former Union Army officer, helped found London in northeastern Kimble County in the late 1870s or early 1880s. He married a local widow, bought a half-section and laid out a town with a town square, hoping it would become the seat of a new county. It never did. A post office opened in 1882 under the name London, the population reached about a hundred by 1896 and roughly 360 by 1930, dipped through the Depression, hit 400 by 1943, then fell to around 110 by the early 1970s before recovering to about 180. The London Town Square was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1971. The dance hall sits on Highway 377 about twenty miles northeast of Junction and still runs Saturday night dances.
History sources checked August 29, 2026.
Things you may not know
- A Union officer tried to found a Texas county seat here. Lewis was a former Union Army officer and horse trader who married into the community, bought land and laid out a square specifically hoping London would become a county government seat. Source
- This London is why the other one is New London. The Rusk County town originally called London had to change its name in 1931 because Kimble County's London already had the post office. That Rusk County town is where the 1937 school explosion killed 270 children and 24 adults, the disaster that led Texas and then the country to require that natural gas be odorized. Source
- The town square is the landmark, not the hall: London Town Square carries RTHL marker number 2988, designated 1971. Source
- The hall is also known as Ivy's. Source
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Continue through rooms connected by London or the Hill Country region.