Internal reconstruction: Grand Theatre, St Leonardsgate, Lancaster

• Architect              1843       Edmund Sharpe
• Architect              1897       Frank Matcham
• Architect              1908       Albert Winstanley

An early theatre, remarkable in that, although it has been through a succession of alterations and extensions at various times over a period of 200 years, much of the basic stone shell of the original building survives. It opened in 1782 with pit, upper and lower boxes and gallery and a capacity of about 500. It was managed from 1791-94 by Stephen Kemble and enjoyed a Sarah Siddons season in 1799. Edmund Sharpe, architect, acquired it in 1843 and extended and reopened it in 1848 as a concert hall with added dwellings and a museum for the local Literary and Natural History Society. The Georgian stage was probably removed at this time and windows opened in the outer walls. He later extended it to the rear and installed an organ. From 1860 it was owned by the Lancaster Athenaeum Company but was closed as unsafe in 1882. A new owner, Henry Wilkinson, improved the staircases, altered the galleries, rebuilt the stage and reopened in 1884 as the Athenaeum Theatre. It was altered again by Frank Matcham in 1897 and given a new stage with a small fly tower.

All this was lost in 1908 when a fire gutted the building. A new interior, designed by Albert Winstanley, was constructed within the Georgian shell and the theatre reopened, renamed the Grand, in the same year. Subsequent remodellings have not been radical and the building as now seen is still recognisable as a partly eighteenth century structure externally, with Winstanley’s Edwardian, four-bay stucco façade and his pleasing interior. The auditorium has one balcony with rich plasterwork on its front, curving around to stage boxes flanking an elliptically arched proscenium. Flat ceiling with raised, moulded frame and restrained ornament. Wedge-shaped stage. The theatre is an amateur producing house owned by the Lancaster Footlights Club.