Former Royal Court Theatre

Former Royal Court Theatre

This theatre, which later served as a cinema and bingo hall, was built in 1886 and 1895 by architect Richardson Thomas Johnson, with subsequent alterations. It is constructed of red brick in English garden wall bond with dressings of matching red terracotta and some yellow brick, with a roof that is probably slate. The building occupies a large rectangular plan set at right-angles to the street and displays an eclectic style with some Renaissance detailing.

The exterior presents three storeys and five bays. A two-storey projected foyer was added in 1895, featuring fluted pilasters to both floors (Ionic at first floor, though partially concealed at ground floor by a twentieth-century fascia), a continuous dentilled cornice, and a geometrical cast-iron balustrade. The ground floor contains a round-headed doorway in the centre with banded pilasters, flanked by recessed entrances with wooden panelled and plate-glass doors, and shop windows in the outer bays. The first floor has a central window with leaded stained glass and an elaborate broken-pedimented architrave with an oculus immediately above set in a swan-necked architrave. Large depressed-arched six-light transomed windows occupy the other bays, with moulded terracotta surrounds and leaded stained glass in the upper lights.

Above and behind the foyer rises the gabled end of the main range, which features four round-headed windows with mask keystones of red terracotta, an egg-and-dart frieze, and a round-headed window in the gable flanked by sunk panels with raised lettering reading "ROYAL COURT" and "THEATRE". The gable has stepped coping with a flaming-urn finial, flanked by yellow terracotta balustrading over the outer bays.

The interior contains a foyer with a pair of composite columns flanking the foot of an imperial staircase with brass handrail. The auditorium retains two curved balconies, the first decorated with Adam-style moulded plaster (the upper now enclosed). Large pictorial relief panels flank the proscenium on the side walls. The proscenium arch features moulded plaster enrichment, though the top is now concealed by a suspended ceiling. The upper gallery, now disused, retains its steeply-raked stepped floor with an inserted projection room in the centre. From this vantage point, the top of the proscenium arch remains visible, displaying moulded plaster pictorial scenes and figures, and a very large circular gilded ceiling dome is visible. Despite alterations made when the building functioned as a cinema and subsequently as a bingo hall, the theatre remains essentially intact.

Richardson Thomas Johnson (1848 to 1929) was born in London, the son of William Johnson from Wigan. By 1869 he was practising from Wallgate as a land, building and engineering surveyor. His first notable building was an arcade further up King Street, later known as Grime's arcade (1871). In 1874 he built the Alexandra Music Hall for his father as a replacement for the Hole in the Wall public house. Following the Royal Court Theatre, Johnson redesigned the Theatre Royal opposite in 1890 (since demolished) and in 1892 redesigned the Alexandra as the Empire Palace theatre (also demolished). He remained in Wigan until the end of the nineteenth century but also had connections in Dewsbury. By 1901 he was practising in Blackpool, later moving to Liverpool where he lived with his daughter's family until his death.