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Archenfield Archaeology Ltd for the |
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The Courtyard, Hereford |
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The Courtyard has a 400 seat Main House and 140 seat Studio Theatre together with a ground floor café-bar and first floor restaurant. |
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The Courtyard is a purpose-built centre standing on the site of what was for many years Hereford’s public baths, completed in 1930. With the construction of new swimming pools south of the Wye, in 1979 the old baths were converted to serve as the Nell Gwynne theatre. This was replaced by the Courtyard. |
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Plan from 1757 showing the position of the Courtyard - north is towards top right. Edgar Street is hedged lane entered through a gate where there is now a roundabout. The area of the livestock market and the football ground were then fields. |
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The road in front of the theatre, Edgar Street, forms part of the A49 trunk route, and now carries much heavy traffic. Until the mid 19th century this was a lane which led north, from the main medieval west gate of the city, Eign Gate, to Widemarsh mill which was situated just to the north of the Courtyard at the entrance to Prior Street. The whole of this area stretching around to the east of the city were the town fields - the Portfields. A new road, connecting this lane to the New Town area of Hereford was built in the 1850s to provide better access from the north to the newly built livestock market. |
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On the right is the Corn Exchange in Broad Street, better known to generations of Herefordians as the Kemble Theatre, was demolished in 1963. The theatre tradition in Hereford is of course much older than the 20th century. In 1650 Nell Gwynne, theatre orange seller, and mistress of Charles II, is supposed to have been born in Pipe Lane in Hereford, now known as Gwynne Street in her honour. At the eastern end of Gwynne Street is the Bishop of Hereford’s Palace, and it would probably have surprised those who knew her as a child that Nell’s grandson, James Beauclerk DD, would one day occupy it as bishop. A more conventional theatrical connection is the fact that David Garrick, ‘the first of Actors’ as his obituary had it, was born in the Angel Inn in Widemarsh Street and christened in All Saint’s church on 28th February 1716. |
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We don't know when the first separate and purpose built theatre was built in Hereford, but inns increasingly set aside rooms for the purpose. On December 31st 1778 Mr Kemble advertised that the elegant theatre he had fitted up in the Half Moon in Broad Street was opening with plays at six and ten o’ clock. Roger Kemble, actor and manager of a company of touring players, had a house in nearby Church Street. His daughter, Sarah Siddons, was to become the leading actress of her generation. The productions in Hereford seem to have covered serious and lighter theatre, often in surprisingly quick succession. On 6th January 1796 the Hereford Journal carried an advertisement ‘that this evening, at the theatre, SHAKESPEARE’S principal tragedy MACBETH’ was to be immediately followed by a musical farce. |
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Originally Lady Southampton’s Chapel, this building in Berrington Street was later the Palladium and is now a bingo hall. Other theatres operated in different parts of Hereford at different times. The Alhambra, behind the now long gone Royal Oak public house in Bridge Street, dated from the early 19th century. The Palladium in Berrington Street, the Garrick in Widemarsh Street and the Kemble in Broad Street all operated in the 20th century. The Kemble, originally the Hereford corn exchange, was demolished in 1963, and from then until the opening of the Nell Gwynne in 1979, the city was without a permanent theatre. |
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The cinema arrived in 1911. Number 74 St Owen’s Street, which had started life as a Primitive Methodist chapel, became the ‘Kinema’ in 1919 and the ‘Pavilion in 1924. The building is now a launderette. By the 1930s there were three cinemas in Hereford, the Garrick and the Kemble named for the local acting connections and under the same ownership, and the Palladium, a former chapel. |
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The films which were to be shown in Hereford in the week beginning Sunday 29th January 1933. Laurel and Hardy, Douglas Fairbanks Jnr and Warren Williams get star billing; Bette Davis isn’t a ‘big name’ yet and gets very small letters in ‘The Dark Horse’. |
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In the 1950s four cinemas were operating in the city, the County (previously the Palladium theatre), the Kemble (when it was not showing live performances), the Odeon and the Ritz (both purpose built cinemas, the latter now called confusingly, the Odeon). These frequently changed their programmes twice a week, sometimes giving the locals a choice of eight different main films, with supporting B films, in the course of one week. A history of the theatre in Herefordshire has been written by Robin Haig and is published by Logaston Press. Robin will be talking at the Studio Theatre at the Courtyard on Friday 11th August. |
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maintained by Archenfield Archaeology Ltd |
