The Old Penzance Theatre

The Old Penzance Theatre

The Old Penzance Theatre, constructed around 1787, stands at the rear of the Union Hotel on Chapel Street. It is a small Georgian theatre built in stone rubble with a grey slate gable roof, one of a select number of early theatres known to survive from this period of theatre development.

The building has a simple rectangular plan. The roughly coursed rubble walls are finished with large granite long and short quoins to the corners and around the original openings. The front gable elevation features a central pair of double doors with a rectangular fanlight, providing access to the ground or basement floor, and a single timber-panelled door to the right, also with a rectangular fanlight, which gives access to the first floor via a side staircase. The north elevation has several later windows of varying styles inserted at first-floor level. At ground or basement level, the north side walls have been pierced through and girders inserted to create car parking spaces beneath the building. This area was formerly used for coaches or carriages, as illustrated in an early sketch of the theatre now held in Harvard University archives. The rear gable has two twelve-pane sash windows either side of the chimney at first-floor level. The right elevation is built against, although several blocked openings in the interior of this wall suggest the building was formerly free standing.

Internally, the building has been much altered, but it retains the original raked stage with trapdoors and parts (encased and largely hidden) of the galleries and rear galleries. Other fragments of the proscenium and galleries survive within the building, though these are no longer fixed nor in their original positions. The first floor contains two rooms with a passage and former gallery. Some original internal joinery survives in situ, including tongue and groove wainscoting in the stairwell and timber-panelled exterior doors. Other features have been reused: the two original gallery support columns are now fixed either side of an inserted arched window, possibly during the period of use as a Masonic Hall. The pit excavated at ground-floor level immediately adjacent to the entrance lobby, which has timber access stairs, is believed to have been used as a cockpit, although it may have originally been constructed as an ice house or storage area.

The theatre was opened in 1787 by Richard Hughes, an actor turned manager who went on to have interests in eight other theatres in the South West and became known as the 'father of Provincial Drama'. The Old Theatre is the same size as the Theatre Royal Richmond and strongly resembles it in plan, and may have been designed by the same architect along with the Georgian Theatre in Stockton on Tees. Approximately 500 people could be accommodated in two ranks of galleries around the perimeter of a central pit. The raked stage occupied around half the floor space, and approximately 70 productions were held each season. Its location, built partially above additional stabling to the rear of the coaching inn, is typical of small provincial theatres and reflects the status of theatre during the period. The inn and its theatre are locally associated with the first public announcement of the victory at Trafalgar. During the 19th century, the theatre's fortunes faltered as theatre-going fell out of favour. Despite the appearance of celebrated actor Edmund Kean in 1828, the theatre failed and closed in 1831. The building was later used as a Masonic Hall and billiard room, and its roof was lowered following storm damage in 1880.

A late 19th or early 20th-century timber and corrugated iron gable roof structure, constructed to cover the open yard between The Old Theatre and the former Net Loft with supports inserted into the north wall of the theatre, is not of historic importance. The theatre forms a strong visual and functional group with the listed buildings on the north east side of Chapel Street, particularly the Union Hotel.