Hippodrome

The Hippodrome was the result of the conversion of an 1846 riding school into a theatre in 1905, although the riding school was sometimes used as a theatre from the time it opened to the public in 1848. It was altered in 1909 and significantly enlarged, with a new stage house, in 1926.

The auditorium was pleasing and intimate with a single near-semicircular balcony linked to boxes either side if the square proscenium. All this has gone following a fire in the late 1960s. The stage house originally had a scenic workshop at the rear, now a heap of rubble. The connecting door has been bricked up but is still visible. Fly tower is intact, one fly floor per side and grid still present. A small cinema has been inserted on the stage. The raked stage is still intact beneath a false floor. No evidence of any substage machinery ever having been installed. Dressing rooms originally under the stage are now derelict.

The external walls of the auditorium (by this time a cinema) were lowered significantly after the fire. The original façade was a tall, stone, ‘industrial classical’ edifice. It was rebuilt in bland modern style with Westmorland slate cladding. Beyond this, however, the original millstone grit construction can be seen, the left hand flank having a blind arcaded treatment. The auditorium side of the fly tower clearly shows where the roof of the theatre abutted the stage house at a much higher level than today.