The Lyric Theatre

In the entry for: TQ 2980 NE CITY OF WESTMINSTER SHAFTESBURY AVENUE The Lyric Theatre 71/53 (including No 5 Archer St and No 16 Great Windmill Street) The address shall be amended to read; SHAFTESBURY AVENUE The Lyric Theatre (including No 5 Archer Street, No 16 Great Windmill Street and Nos 27-29 (odd) Shaftesbury Avenue)

TQ 2980 NE CITY OF WESTMINSTER SHAFTESBURY AVENUE W1 71/53 The Lyric Theatre (including No 5 Archer 28-6-72 St and No 16 Great Windmill Street) GV II Theatre incorporating house front to Great Windmill Street. The house front is of c1767 by Robert Mylne, altered; red brick, slate roof; 4 storeys; 5 windows wide; ground floor altered, upper floors with recessed sashes under flat gauged arches; stone cornice and blocking course; iron railings to closed area; an L.C.C. plaque reads "This was the house and museum of Sir William Hunter, anatomist, 1718-1783"; interior radically altered as dressing rooms for theatre. The theatre: 1888 by C. J. Phipps. Brick and stone facade to Shaftesbury Avenue, slate roof. Eclectic Italian-Flemish Renaissance with dominating arcade theme. 3 storeys and attic. 5 major bays wide, the windows grouped in the rhythm 3:2:4:2:3 with centre and terminal bays as pediment gabled pavilions. Arcaded ground floor with canopied foyer entrance in right hand pavilion and taller semicircular arched doorway to central pavilion serving as exit. Upper floors have groups of arcaded windows treated as loggias to the 1st floor of the pavilions, elaborated to the central pavilion with the name of the theatre in large carved lettering above the attic windows. The 3 pavilions have arcaded and pedimented attics. Entrance vestibule, crush room, stalls bar etc refurbished by Michael Rosenauer in 1932; but the elegant eclectic classical auditorium much as Phipps left it with 3 partly canti- levered balconies, the upper two of horseshoe shape, the dress circle straightened at the end of each return and partitioned into 3 boxes; deep elliptical arched proscenium with enriched tympanum, flanked by pairs of giant, pedestalled Corinthian columns framing 3 tiers of boxes; ceiling of circular panelled design, etc. The stage incorporates a small revolve and the stage grid retains drum and shaft mechanism; under stage is an iron stand-by hydraulic pump by Clark Burnett, 1888. Survey of London; vol XXXI The Theatres of London; Mander and Mitchenson

Listing NGR: TQ2960480810