PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
The Crest of a Wave
This is going to be a thoroughly optimistic assessment of the current state of the Matcham legacy, but I want to start off in a quite different vein. Every artist knows that bright figures always look better set against a dark background, so let me start off with a brush full of gloom.
We all know - or we certainly ought to know by now - that at least five sixths of Frank Matcham’s total theatrical output has been destroyed or, at best, mutilated beyond recall. Out of the120 major creative works that he packed into 35 years (these, of course, are round figures - some would put the figure as high as 150, but I am erring on the side of caution) only 28 now remain in more or less complete condition. Of these, 25 are theatres (and one of them - the Lyric Hammersmith - is a modern re-creation rather than a survivor).
These depressing figures are not really surprising when viewed against the rate of loss of theatres in general. The Curtains survey estimated in 1982 that 85% of all the theatres existing in 1914 (most of them then active) had been demolished. Seen in this light, the survival rate for Frank’s theatres is slightly better than average, but it still amounts to a devastating wastage.
While we are into sad statistics, let’s have a few more. Run your eye quickly down the long list of Matcham losses in the Theatres Trust Guide. Strike out absolutely every case where you know or have reason to suspect that there had been a complete rebuilding or massive alteration before the recorded demolition date. You will still find it easy to identify between 40 and50 Matcham theatres of real quality that, if they were standing today, would be prime candidates for revival and restoration. The saddest cases are, of course, those where the places concerned now have no well-designed theatres at all, ancient or modern.
But I can make this background darker yet. Losses in the inter-war years were numerous, but somehow they were less painful than what was to follow. In the thirties cinema boom, if you lost a theatre, you might mourn the loss of the gaudy rococo of the Matcham school, but there was a fair chance that you would get a riot of Art Deco in return.
But there were no such compensations after the war. Fine theatres that stood in the way of the property development juggernaut were simply scythed down. No one in the 1950s and 60s time saw old theatres as cultural assets. Film and television were the future. Live theatre was dead on its feet, everyone knew that. The very idea of listing and preserving any of these useless old relics would have been considered laughable. Most of them weren’t even thought to be worth the bother of photographic recording before they were demolished. It was as if the leaders of the greatest theatre-building boom in history had never existed. Frank Matcham? Bertie Crewe? W G R Sprague? Never heard of them.
The great building boom of 1885 to 1915 was matched between 1950 and 1975 by the greatest theatre massacre ever seen. In that 25-year period, in Greater London alone, 35 theatres were demolished. Of these, 20 were by Matcham. And experience in the rest of the UK was much the same.
Now let’s switch on the lights. The rehabilitation of Frank Matcham and his contemporaries in the last twenty or so years has been little short of astonishing. Britain’s boom theatres are now looked upon as an extraordinary inheritance in world terms. Matcham may have been looked down on by the architectural establishment in his lifetime. He may have been instantly forgotten after his death and he may have been ignored by most architectural historians in the post-war years, but he is now accepted without question as being our greatest theatre architect, setting standards against which all the others are judged.
It gets better. Since the loss of Wood Green Empire in 1970 (where a pathetic façade remains), the Karsino and the Granville, Walham Green, in 1971 and Longton Empire as recently as 1993 (but that was a fire), we may say that, barring nasty accidents, no first rate Matcham theatre is now seriously at risk. There may yet be heated arguments over, for example, the two Portsmouth theatres and the Aberdeen Tivoli, but there is everything to play for and anyone who talks failure had better be able to run faster than the lynching party. And by the way, even the rightly lamented loss of the Granville had its compensations. It triggered immediate action by the GLC, which re-evaluated all of London‘s surviving old theatres and music halls. This, in turn, led to a national study that secured the listing of dozens of previously unprotected entertainment buildings.
There is, today, hardly a Victorian or Edwardian theatre of real quality that has not been assessed by the scholars and included in the statutory lists of buildings of special architectural or historic interest. All save one of Matcham’s surviving theatres are listed (again, the Lyric Hammersmith reconstruction of 1979 is the odd one out). Also listed are his Blackpool Tower Circus, his Tower Ballroom and his Leeds County Arcade. Of Matcham’s total of 28 listed buildings, no fewer than14 are Grade II*, putting them in the top 6% of all listed buildings. Actually another three are in Grade I, but in these cases (for example, Newcastle Theatre Royal) you could reasonably argue that the credit cannot be all down to our Frank. But, count them how you like this is a truly astonishing score for an architect whose works had, for all practical purposes, been totally disregarded until the 1970s
And that’s not all. These buildings are no mere survivors. Of Matcham’s glorious 25 theatres, 20 are to varying degrees in live stage entertainment use and 17 of these are dedicated, full time, 52 weeks of the year, theatres. Three of them are in other uses but without lasting damage to their theatre potential, one is dark, but not completely without prospects and one (the London Hippodrome) is in what you might call an interesting condition. That sounds like a pregnancy and, in a sense, it is. I’ll come back to that.
The record of recent care is also remarkable. Since Victor Glasstone’s first restoration campaign at the Douglas Gaiety in 1978 and Arups’ here, in Buxton, in 1979, we have seen major restorations carried out at Nottingham, Belfast, Blackpool, Aberdeen, Wakefield, Newcastle and Richmond. Hackney Empire has established itself anew as a highly popular working theatre and is, at this moment, nearing the end of a monumental restoration and improvement project. Part of the London Palladium has had its decorations restored precisely to Matcham’s intentions, as the first step in what is intended to be a continuing process. The London Coliseum is buzzing with £41 million worth of activity. By next year, all evidence of its post-war mutilations will have disappeared and the Coliseum will look much more like itself - more like the mighty theatre that Matcham and Stoll intended.
Douglas Gaiety has meanwhile become the only Matcham theatre to have been restored to a state of what can only be described as being near to archaeological perfection. As near, that is, as one might get without making the theatre unusable for modern performance. A quite remarkable achievement. It could probably have been done only in this one theatre in this one place.
The list goes on. There are encouraging straws in the wind for Glasgow Kings. Architects, engineers, theatre and conservation consultants are now working on plans for the Harrogate Royal Hall, Britain’s only true Kursaal. The Theatres Trust with the Society of London Theatre have been examining all London’s commercial West End theatres to assess what needs to be done to make them more attractive to theatre goers and secure their future as working theatres into the new century - and that, of course, includes some of Matcham’s greatest houses.
Which brings me back to the London Hippodrome. We are most unlikely to see that glorious auditorium again, since its gruesomely unnecessary devastation in 1958, but Matcham’s monumental sandstone exterior with its skeleton dome and rearing chariot horses (and, originally, Roman soldiers on the parapet) will be defended with vigour. We may be confident that it will, in time, be restored. And despite the extremely unhelpful planning history of the site, Westminster City Council are showing quite remarkable determination in insisting that any new development must contain a real theatre (‘real’ because, in similar circumstances in the past, what has been offered has been a useful little conference room designated ‘theatre’ on the plans).
One remarkable event in the last two years has been ATG’s creation of a Matcham Room at Richmond Theatre, with a dazzling display of faithful copies of some of his best surviving drawings. This was a generous and enlightened act by a commercial company.
But if we are looking to add to the catalogue of good news items we need only look across the road from where we are now, in the Old Hall. Buxton Opera House has just enjoyed its second restoration campaign (and even this is referred to as ‘phase 1’, promising more to come) with the spectacular painted ceilings and burnished gilt in wonderful condition. Here, too, a Matcham room has been created, perfectly judged to engage the interest of visitors and leave them with some understanding of the architect and his gorgeous theatre.
Before I finally tie up this untidy bundle of facts and statistics, I think the moment has come to glance back to the beginnings of the Society. It is less than 10 years since that remarkable day at Wakefield Theatre Royal and Opera House, in 1994, when Arthur Starkie and a few stalwarts decided to form a Frank Matcham Club. I hope the survivors of that historic event won’t be put out if I say that you can’t possibly have anticipated how successful your initiative would turn out to be.
But success comes with a price. In the early days of the struggle to start up the engine, it is something of an achievement simply to be active and stay solvent. Now, with an impressive past and present record of ambitious tours, not only all over the UK but also to European theatres; when we have not only an impressive and thoroughly collectable Newsletter, but also a great web site, people are inclined to say ‘Right! Well done! But what’s your next trick going to be?’
Well, we certainly have to give this some thought. I sense that the extraordinary climate I have been describing is coming to a sort of climax in which many things may now be possible that could not have been contemplated even a very few years ago. We have never known such a time in the past and there is no guarantee that we will ever see anything like it again. The question in my mind is – How can we ride this wave? What in fact, is our next trick going to be?
John Earl
The Crest of a Wave
This is going to be a thoroughly optimistic assessment of the current state of the Matcham legacy, but I want to start off in a quite different vein. Every artist knows that bright figures always look better set against a dark background, so let me start off with a brush full of gloom.
We all know - or we certainly ought to know by now - that at least five sixths of Frank Matcham’s total theatrical output has been destroyed or, at best, mutilated beyond recall. Out of the120 major creative works that he packed into 35 years (these, of course, are round figures - some would put the figure as high as 150, but I am erring on the side of caution) only 28 now remain in more or less complete condition. Of these, 25 are theatres (and one of them - the Lyric Hammersmith - is a modern re-creation rather than a survivor).
These depressing figures are not really surprising when viewed against the rate of loss of theatres in general. The Curtains survey estimated in 1982 that 85% of all the theatres existing in 1914 (most of them then active) had been demolished. Seen in this light, the survival rate for Frank’s theatres is slightly better than average, but it still amounts to a devastating wastage.
While we are into sad statistics, let’s have a few more. Run your eye quickly down the long list of Matcham losses in the Theatres Trust Guide. Strike out absolutely every case where you know or have reason to suspect that there had been a complete rebuilding or massive alteration before the recorded demolition date. You will still find it easy to identify between 40 and50 Matcham theatres of real quality that, if they were standing today, would be prime candidates for revival and restoration. The saddest cases are, of course, those where the places concerned now have no well-designed theatres at all, ancient or modern.
But I can make this background darker yet. Losses in the inter-war years were numerous, but somehow they were less painful than what was to follow. In the thirties cinema boom, if you lost a theatre, you might mourn the loss of the gaudy rococo of the Matcham school, but there was a fair chance that you would get a riot of Art Deco in return.
But there were no such compensations after the war. Fine theatres that stood in the way of the property development juggernaut were simply scythed down. No one in the 1950s and 60s time saw old theatres as cultural assets. Film and television were the future. Live theatre was dead on its feet, everyone knew that. The very idea of listing and preserving any of these useless old relics would have been considered laughable. Most of them weren’t even thought to be worth the bother of photographic recording before they were demolished. It was as if the leaders of the greatest theatre-building boom in history had never existed. Frank Matcham? Bertie Crewe? W G R Sprague? Never heard of them.
The great building boom of 1885 to 1915 was matched between 1950 and 1975 by the greatest theatre massacre ever seen. In that 25-year period, in Greater London alone, 35 theatres were demolished. Of these, 20 were by Matcham. And experience in the rest of the UK was much the same.
Now let’s switch on the lights. The rehabilitation of Frank Matcham and his contemporaries in the last twenty or so years has been little short of astonishing. Britain’s boom theatres are now looked upon as an extraordinary inheritance in world terms. Matcham may have been looked down on by the architectural establishment in his lifetime. He may have been instantly forgotten after his death and he may have been ignored by most architectural historians in the post-war years, but he is now accepted without question as being our greatest theatre architect, setting standards against which all the others are judged.
It gets better. Since the loss of Wood Green Empire in 1970 (where a pathetic façade remains), the Karsino and the Granville, Walham Green, in 1971 and Longton Empire as recently as 1993 (but that was a fire), we may say that, barring nasty accidents, no first rate Matcham theatre is now seriously at risk. There may yet be heated arguments over, for example, the two Portsmouth theatres and the Aberdeen Tivoli, but there is everything to play for and anyone who talks failure had better be able to run faster than the lynching party. And by the way, even the rightly lamented loss of the Granville had its compensations. It triggered immediate action by the GLC, which re-evaluated all of London‘s surviving old theatres and music halls. This, in turn, led to a national study that secured the listing of dozens of previously unprotected entertainment buildings.
There is, today, hardly a Victorian or Edwardian theatre of real quality that has not been assessed by the scholars and included in the statutory lists of buildings of special architectural or historic interest. All save one of Matcham’s surviving theatres are listed (again, the Lyric Hammersmith reconstruction of 1979 is the odd one out). Also listed are his Blackpool Tower Circus, his Tower Ballroom and his Leeds County Arcade. Of Matcham’s total of 28 listed buildings, no fewer than14 are Grade II*, putting them in the top 6% of all listed buildings. Actually another three are in Grade I, but in these cases (for example, Newcastle Theatre Royal) you could reasonably argue that the credit cannot be all down to our Frank. But, count them how you like this is a truly astonishing score for an architect whose works had, for all practical purposes, been totally disregarded until the 1970s
And that’s not all. These buildings are no mere survivors. Of Matcham’s glorious 25 theatres, 20 are to varying degrees in live stage entertainment use and 17 of these are dedicated, full time, 52 weeks of the year, theatres. Three of them are in other uses but without lasting damage to their theatre potential, one is dark, but not completely without prospects and one (the London Hippodrome) is in what you might call an interesting condition. That sounds like a pregnancy and, in a sense, it is. I’ll come back to that.
The record of recent care is also remarkable. Since Victor Glasstone’s first restoration campaign at the Douglas Gaiety in 1978 and Arups’ here, in Buxton, in 1979, we have seen major restorations carried out at Nottingham, Belfast, Blackpool, Aberdeen, Wakefield, Newcastle and Richmond. Hackney Empire has established itself anew as a highly popular working theatre and is, at this moment, nearing the end of a monumental restoration and improvement project. Part of the London Palladium has had its decorations restored precisely to Matcham’s intentions, as the first step in what is intended to be a continuing process. The London Coliseum is buzzing with £41 million worth of activity. By next year, all evidence of its post-war mutilations will have disappeared and the Coliseum will look much more like itself - more like the mighty theatre that Matcham and Stoll intended.
Douglas Gaiety has meanwhile become the only Matcham theatre to have been restored to a state of what can only be described as being near to archaeological perfection. As near, that is, as one might get without making the theatre unusable for modern performance. A quite remarkable achievement. It could probably have been done only in this one theatre in this one place.
The list goes on. There are encouraging straws in the wind for Glasgow Kings. Architects, engineers, theatre and conservation consultants are now working on plans for the Harrogate Royal Hall, Britain’s only true Kursaal. The Theatres Trust with the Society of London Theatre have been examining all London’s commercial West End theatres to assess what needs to be done to make them more attractive to theatre goers and secure their future as working theatres into the new century - and that, of course, includes some of Matcham’s greatest houses.
Which brings me back to the London Hippodrome. We are most unlikely to see that glorious auditorium again, since its gruesomely unnecessary devastation in 1958, but Matcham’s monumental sandstone exterior with its skeleton dome and rearing chariot horses (and, originally, Roman soldiers on the parapet) will be defended with vigour. We may be confident that it will, in time, be restored. And despite the extremely unhelpful planning history of the site, Westminster City Council are showing quite remarkable determination in insisting that any new development must contain a real theatre (‘real’ because, in similar circumstances in the past, what has been offered has been a useful little conference room designated ‘theatre’ on the plans).
One remarkable event in the last two years has been ATG’s creation of a Matcham Room at Richmond Theatre, with a dazzling display of faithful copies of some of his best surviving drawings. This was a generous and enlightened act by a commercial company.
But if we are looking to add to the catalogue of good news items we need only look across the road from where we are now, in the Old Hall. Buxton Opera House has just enjoyed its second restoration campaign (and even this is referred to as ‘phase 1’, promising more to come) with the spectacular painted ceilings and burnished gilt in wonderful condition. Here, too, a Matcham room has been created, perfectly judged to engage the interest of visitors and leave them with some understanding of the architect and his gorgeous theatre.
Before I finally tie up this untidy bundle of facts and statistics, I think the moment has come to glance back to the beginnings of the Society. It is less than 10 years since that remarkable day at Wakefield Theatre Royal and Opera House, in 1994, when Arthur Starkie and a few stalwarts decided to form a Frank Matcham Club. I hope the survivors of that historic event won’t be put out if I say that you can’t possibly have anticipated how successful your initiative would turn out to be.
But success comes with a price. In the early days of the struggle to start up the engine, it is something of an achievement simply to be active and stay solvent. Now, with an impressive past and present record of ambitious tours, not only all over the UK but also to European theatres; when we have not only an impressive and thoroughly collectable Newsletter, but also a great web site, people are inclined to say ‘Right! Well done! But what’s your next trick going to be?’
Well, we certainly have to give this some thought. I sense that the extraordinary climate I have been describing is coming to a sort of climax in which many things may now be possible that could not have been contemplated even a very few years ago. We have never known such a time in the past and there is no guarantee that we will ever see anything like it again. The question in my mind is – How can we ride this wave? What in fact, is our next trick going to be?
John Earl
