Theatre Royal (with Borough Hall)

The history of the site is complex.

After the closure of Thornton’s Theatre in Market Street, Guildford had no purpose-built theatre. In 1846 the Guildford Mechanics’ Institute opened on North Street and this building was greatly enlarged in 1861 by an additional 80ft long hall extending on the west side down Leapale Road. The County & Borough Halls, as the building was now known, retained the old hall. In 1912 the large (County) hall was rebuilt internally and further extended to become the 1050 seat Theatre Royal.

The theatre had a raked floor of steel and concrete, a circle and gallery and a new roof. At the same time the old Borough Hall was given a new stage and an enlarged gallery, but at opposite ends to the original stage and gallery.

The Theatre Royal closed in 1933, having failed to meet the local authority’s structural and safety requirements, some of which (for example, the insistence on a reinforced concrete stage) seem to have been quite unreasonable. The Guildford Cooperative Society, having bought the entire property, used the building as a shop and store but left the theatre auditorium disused, in situ. Around the 1950s, however, the circle and gallery were removed.

The Borough Hall/Guildford Theatre was gutted by a fire in 1963 which also destroyed the roof of the old Theatre Royal. The Borough Hall had had occasional use by professional theatre companies in 1933 and 1942, but from 1946 to 1963, as the Guildford Theatre, it housed the successful and highly-regarded Guildford Repertory Company. Following the 1963 fire, the Coop store was extended into the Theatre Royal site.

The original 1845 and 1861 elevations were in Bargate Stone with ashlar dressings in a pleasant, gabled Tudor manner. Subsequent alterations made rather a mess of the gables and fenestration.

Internally, the theatre was an odd hybrid, more like a cinema than a theatre, with a rather uncomfortably detailed tunnel vaulted ceiling, two curved balconies, one above the other, with the briefest of side slips, no boxes and no architectural link between balcony fronts and proscenium.

The Borough Hall, in its final form, had a proscenium with the borough coat of arms. The destruction of the old Theatre Royal and Borough Hall accelerated plans for the building of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre.