 Jenny Lind and Charles Dickens performed at the Victoria Rooms.It was also the venue for important dinners and assemblies, including banquets to commemorate the opening of the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the quatercentennial anniversary of Cabot's discovery of North America, meetings which led to the establishment of the University College, Bristol, an early congress of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and suffragettes "at-homes".The building was purchased and given to the University in 1920 as a home for the student union and, circa 1924, it spent a brief period as a cinema.