Tettenhall College Theatre

A school theatre, included here also because of its unusual architectural and historic interest.

The theatre now forms part of a college. It is used daily for assemblies and occasionally licensed for public performances. It was designed originally as the Great Music Room of Tettenhall Towers, the house of Col Thomas Thorneycroft, scientist, engineer, ironmaster and public-spirited capitalist.

The house at Tettenhall was built about 1770, altered probably in the 1820s and added to extensively by Thorneycroft from 1860, incorporating innovatory heating and ventilating systems. His large room was built ‘for concerts, penny readings, theatricals, lectures and public meetings’ because the village had been unable to provide itself with a hall.

In its earliest form it was a wide rectangular room panelled in the Old English manner, with a deep recess at what is now the stage end. There were two balconies of unequal depth, the upper one set forward with a balustraded front, an elaborate carved alcove containing a chimney piece under the end balcony and an understated proscenium division at the recess end. The floor (laid on rubber springs for dancing) was level throughout. In this form it would have served well for concerts and a published plan shows that, for more ambitious theatricals, a ‘fit up’ scenic stage was built.

Some time after 1880 the room was altered and turned into a permanently equipped theatre. In 1948 a floor was inserted at upper balcony level, reducing the height of the room and producing the single-balconied private theatre seen today.

There is now a raised stage and permanent wood and plaster proscenium, with curving jaws linking it to the old structural division. This proscenium probably dates from 1880-1890 but shows signs of later alteration. The stage itself is unusually generous in size for a house theatre, about 6.1m (20ft) deep with a proscenium opening of about 6.4m (21ft). Col Thorneycroft was interested in lighting effects and described the way in which coloured lights in the ‘pleasure grounds’, seen through the end window, could ‘make the (old fit-up) stage look about 61m (200ft) long’. The lower balcony, continuing through the present stage, serves as a fly gallery. The balustrades here may be relics of the earlier treatment of the room.

A fragile survival of this kind deserves detailed study and further documentary research. Any modernisation or fire safety works required will need to be undertaken with considerable skill and understanding.