Theatres (other than Hippodrome/Coventry Theatre)

Hi all & thank you Greenman Fifty years is just flying by as I read your posts. Gosh!

Good Morning Greenman, Thank you for your response. Yes, Caroline was a very bubbly person at school and I think she was destined for an acting career, very popular at school with all of us. I was sad to read that she had passed away. I remember meeting her father just the once, at one of her birthday parties.

A few of the members may already know of me, but despite this, I wish to introduce myself. My name is Matthew Duffy and I run a blog called Coventry Culture, which you can access here I am currently developing a feature on the blog as regards to Theatres in Coventry. I know of The Belgrade and The Coventry Theatre/Hippodrome, the former opening in 1958, the latter 1844-1906-1937-2004 and of course The Criterion Theatre in Earlsdon (1961-) My question is besides the above, what other theatres were there in Coventry? I apologise if this seems like an obvious question to you clued-up members, but your help would be much appreciated. Additionally, all credit will be given to members in the feature. Thanks for your time

There's the The Co-operative Theatre in Wyken which still exists, but I suspect you are after bygone theatres.

Theatre Royal/Empire in Smithford Street 1819-1895 Opera House, Hales Street 1889-1940 Sydenham Palace, Lower Ford Street 1891-? Butts College/Theatre, The Butts 1935-2010, reopened as The Albany Theatre February 2013 There was also a second, smaller theatre alongside the college whose name escapes me? The Parkgate/Apollo Concert Hall, Little Park Street. 1848-1959

Anyone who is interested in Coventry's theatres, and others, should look out for a copy of 'Coventry's Forgotten Theatre'. The book by Ted Bottle is mainly about the Theatre Royal & Empire. Published in 2004 and costing £12.50 it's well worth having on the bookshelf.

Criterion Theatre in pictures, celebrating 60th anniversary

Dreamtime - did you ever see this?

Morning MR, Yes, I have read that article, and I have watched her many times on TV and she was destined to follow her acting career. Always a giggle at school and very popular. Thank you for that

Albany Theatre future

New to the forum. I thought members might like to see some images of a Coventry Opera House programme for the Coventry Repertory Company performance of Dracula on 13th November 1939 just a year before the Opera House was damaged in the Blitz. I found the programme currently listed on a well known internet auction site if anyone is interested.

HersalCommon, Hello and welcome. A very interesting programme that takes us right back in history to a over a century ago. 1880's and there were dozens of silk-house owners, mill owners and watch manufacturers in Coventry, they all had large houses or estates. Skears Rew had built the last theatre in 1818 in Smithford Street so they wanted a new and better theatre. 1889 they built The Opera House, for the upper-middle class world of the theatre. The first-half of the twentieth century was for well-to-do people only - the dress circle was so named because you were expected to wear evening dress. Like the stalls, a few odd seats in the gallery were for commoners. Horse carriages queued up in the Burges and Bishop Street awaiting to unload - top hats and tails, women in beautiful dresses. A uniformed boy held the horses still while they alighted. Here they would watch the plays like 'Dracula'. 'Agatha Christie', 'Gladys Mitchell' who-dun-it plays were very popular, they may have done more Shakespeare while the new theatre in Stratford was being built in 1932. The Opera suffered bomb damage in 1940 - refurbished, it opened as a cinema in 1941.

That's not true. Off Vicar Lane in 1850, and on the site of the Corn Exchange stood several houses, stables and buildings, occupied by a cow-keeper and a coach proprietor. The latter, a Mr B, was one of the first to introduce cars into the city, they were large and accommodating. He would put his fares into his coach and deliver them to where they wished to go, thus becoming Coventry's first taxi service. A long time would pass before it became the Empire.

Yes... and no. Sorry Kaga. Yes, in 1850, where the Corn Exchange was to be built it was houses and stables etc. In 1888 the Theatre Royal was in a yard east of the Barracks off Smithford Street. It backed onto/was attached to the Congregational Chapel in Vicar Lane. By 1897 it had been renamed the Empire Theatre. The Corn Exchange during those times was on Hertford Street but its rear was all the way over on Vicar Lane. By 1914 (and I don't know exactly when everything moved) the Corn Exchange building became The Empire Theatre. The Corn Exchange moved to near the White Lion. I don't know enough about any of it to know when the theatre became a cinema. I'll add the thought that it was the expanding printing works that drove other business out of that area, repurposing or rebuilding as it grew.

Helen, I took this story from a history book written in 1880, so like I told Rob, can we trust our history books? Historical Collection from the British Library. I can only apologise