Theatre Royal Drury Lane And Attached Sir Augustus Harris Memorial Drinking Fountain

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and Attached Sir Augustus Harris Memorial Drinking Fountain

Theatre. Rebuilt in 1811–12 by Benjamin Dean Wyatt, with a portico added in 1820 and Russell Street colonnade in 1831 by Samuel Beazley. The auditorium was rebuilt in 1921–22 by J. Emblin Walker, Jones and Crombie, but the original Wyatt reception rooms and foyer were retained.

The building has a stuccoed facade with a cast iron colonnade to Russell Street, brick and stucco dressing above, and a stucco rear elevation to Drury Lane beneath a slate roof. The design employs restrained Grecian detailing across two tall storeys set on a plinth. The entrance front is five windows wide, arranged in the pattern 1:3:1. The centre three bays of the ground floor are screened by a large, austere portico of coupled antae-piers with anthemion bands to their necks. Three semicircular arched doorways lead into the hall, recessed for one order within a shallow arcade and flanked by engaged circular pedestals supporting cast iron lamps. The outer bays feature semicircular arched openings on the ground floor and eared, architraved and corniced first-floor windows, with flanking giant pilasters carrying the deep entablature and parapet. The three central first-floor windows have eared architraves and pediments. The cast iron colonnade to Russell Street comprises coupled fluted Ionic columns carrying an entablature with wrought iron lamp brackets suspended between each pair of columns.

The interior is unique amongst London theatres in retaining surviving elements of Wyatt's original interiors, including a Greek Doric vestibule, an oculus-galleried rotunda hall, an elegant iron balustraded staircase ascending symmetrically on either side to a central first-floor rotunda foyer with Corinthian column screens beneath a coffered dome. The 1921–22 auditorium is in Empire style, with three tiers of three-bay boxes and three balconies, and features an elaborate and important installation of Asphaleia stage machinery.

An attached memorial drinking fountain on the Catherine Street facade, dating to approximately 1897, was designed by Sydney R. J. Smith and erected by public subscription through the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough Association. The bust of Harris is by Sir Thomas Brock. The fountain and basin occupy a round-arched niche in a rough-hewn rusticated granite base. Above this base are carved putti forming the centre of a plinth from which rise polished granite Corinthian columns with bronze enrichments of musical trophies and Masonic devices at their bases. These columns carry a sandstone pediment. A recessed central niche with enriched pulvinated pilasters carries a broken segmental pediment beneath which stands a bronze bust of Harris on a plinth. Sir Augustus Harris was a popular impresario who resurrected the Drury Lane theatre when it had fallen into decline. Founded in 1859, the Metropolitan Free Drinking Association (with Cattle Trough added in 1867) provided free fresh water to both humans and animals at a time when ale and spirits were easier to obtain than water and most supplies were contaminated. The Christian association of water with spiritual purity led Victorian evangelicals to become patrons of the association, which provided a catalogue of functional designs, although some wealthy patrons commissioned their own.