The Victorian Theatre

Sir David Salomons (1797-1873), a financier and a central figure in Anglo-Jewish emancipation, purchased a small villa in 1829 and had it enlarged into a substantial country house. Extensive later additions have completely embedded the original Decimus Burton design. Sir David’s nephew and heir, David Lionel Salomons (1851-1925) added a water tower and stables of lavish proportions and, in 1896, a ‘scientific theatre’. He employed an architect (W Barnsley Hughes) for the stables, but the water tower and the theatre were built to his own designs.

The younger Salomons was a scientist, electrician, engineer, photographer and expert on motor design and mechanics. He invented burglar alarms, automatic railway signals and installed electric generating and lighting equipment in his own house. By the time the theatre was complete the house contained 25 machines and 60,000 tools. Electricity was used for cooking and butter-making.

The scientific theatre, said at the time to be the largest private theatre in the country, was designed to serve Sir David’s interests as a scientist and music lover. It was a flat-floored room, originally benched, with a gallery supported on columns on three sides. Rectangular-arched proscenium and ante-proscenium, both higher than wide. For the demonstration of scientific effects and theatrical illusions, it had projectors, painted scenery and electrical apparatus for producing the effects of thunder and lightning. From 1913 it also had a 2400 pipe automatic Welte Philharmonic organ and echo organ. The stage had flying space, fly galleries, a prompter’s box and traps.

The house, theatre and gardens were given to the people of Kent in 1937 to be used as a technical institute and museum, but the house became a convalescent home in the Second World War and later passed to the National Health Service, who relinquished it in 1971. A proposal in 1978 to turn the theatre into a National Musical Museum, based on the Frank Holland Collection, failed to make progress.

In 1991 Broomhill Opera was founded and, with the support of the Arts Council, the theatre became a community opera house. Dressing rooms were provided under the stage and an orchestra pit was formed, retractable raked seating installed and means of escape improved, but the room was not ideal for the purpose and the venture failed to attract audiences in sufficient numbers. After 1999 Broomhill Opera leased Wilton’s Music Hall in London.

The auditorium is now used infrequently for concerts. In recent years some of Salomons’ scientific items kept in the theatre seem to have been lost and some have been removed to store, but the scientific theatre is still, in large part, complete and restorable.

The importance (still not sufficiently recognised) of Sir David Lionel Salomons to the history of modern science and engineering is such that his theatre should be regarded as a working exhibit of not less than national importance.