Theatre Attached To West Of Boscombe Manor (Shelley Manor)

The building is a private theatre attached to the west of Boscombe Manor, also known as Shelley Manor, constructed between 1865 and 1866, possibly by Joseph Peacock, for Sir Percy Florence Shelley. It was altered in 1870. The theatre is built of red brick with stone dressings and features a slate hipped roof with deep eaves. A later 20th-century brick stack is located on the west side.

The theatre has a rectangular plan with an auditorium and a stage at the west end, and it is connected to Boscombe Manor at the east end. It is one storey with an attic and consists of two projecting bays on the left side, with brick pilasters and stringcourses between the bays. The ground floor has French casements, with lunettes above, and a stone balustrade or frieze of linked roundels under the eaves of the attic casements. The balustrade, stringcourses, and pilasters continue on the projection to the left, which includes a lower two-storey wing featuring brick stringcourses and pilasters, lunettes on the east and west sides, and two four-pane sashes on the front. The southwest corner has a large 20th-century brick stack, and the west side also displays brick pilasters and strings. There are later additions on the north elevation.

Inside, the auditorium features moulded plaster ceiling cornices and plastered beams supported by console brackets. There is a private box on the east side with flanking consoles and sliding shutters. The proscenium is moulded and elliptical with imposts. Originally, the auditorium was decorated with murals, and it has a raised stage without machinery. The floor of the auditorium is not raked.

Boscombe Manor was purchased in 1851 by Sir Percy Florence Shelley, the son of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft. He remodeled the earlier 19th-century house in the 1850s and initially built a temporary private theatre in the grounds, which he later replaced with this theatre in 1865-6.