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The reason for the name change is unclear, but it seems to mirror a change in style and use. In the early days plays and light opera including the touring company of the D'Oyly Carte were presented but these gradually gave way to music hall and variety shows. Music hall programmes had been staged in the Bourne Inn in nearby Pevensey Road until around , and it is true that the Royal Hippodrome Theatre was, and still is at the unfashionable end of town. The music hall star Vesta Tilley appeared on a bill here in May Although the foyer was substantially remodelled during the s, the auditorium remains much as it was in From summer repertory variety flourished with the Eastbourne Players a stock company — there was a resident orchestra of 13 under the baton of Mr Alfred Brocklebank and a permanent theatre staff of The theatre closed for part of the Second World War , though not before a young Hylda Baker had graced its boards in early The streets to the east became known as "Hellfire Corner" as they were heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe.
The theatre itself escaped a direct hit, almost miraculously since the Lion pub and Caffyn's motor garage only yards away were obliterated; however blast damage caused much of the theatre's original ornate plaster work to be damaged beyond repair, and later this had to be removed.
The theatre continued in private ownership until when, with declining audience numbers, the company was forced to look for a buyer. Around that time Southern TV were interested in purchasing the building for a TV studio but negotiations fell through and the building was bought by Eastbourne Borough Council. In the 's it was the summer season for old Hollywood musical extracts, attracting many of the elderly residents and holiday makers, reminiscing of years gone by For one summer season, I operated the lighting whilst at the same time attending Eastbourne College of Art and Design, this was me evening job, to pay for the college, and where the lighting controls were more akin to something from the 40's rather than the 70's, but that smell of the artists makeup, and musty aroma of a historical dusty theatre, remain in my memory, to this day In Eastbourne Borough Council spent a considerable amount of money on the theatre to bring it up to date with current legislation.
The venue was completely rewired and numerous improvements were made backstage. It also had a brand new emergency lighting and fire detection system installed. Eastbourne Theatres bought in a new producer to stage a show for the summr season that year and due to the refurbishments opened slightly later than normal. In December Noel Edmunds and the television channel Sky1 came to the theatre to record the programme Noel's Christmas Presents which was broadcast on Christmas Day.
In , in an attempt to boost audience figures, Matthews Productions returned to the Royal Hippodrome as a production company, with Eastbourne Theatres continuing to operate the venue. In England and Wales, an amenity society must be notified of any work to a listed building which involves any element of demolition. Owners of listed buildings are, in circumstances, compelled to repair and maintain them.
When alterations are permitted, or when listed buildings are repaired or maintained, slightly different systems operate in each area of the United Kingdom, though the basic principles of the listing remain the same. It was the damage to caused by German bombing during World War II that prompted the first listing of buildings that were deemed to be of particular architectural merit. The listings were used as a means of determining whether a building should be rebuilt if it was damaged by bombing. Listing was first introduced into Northern Ireland under the Planning Order , the listing process has since developed slightly differently in each part of the UK.
A heritage asset is a part of the environment that is valued because of its historic. Only some of these are judged to be important enough to have legal protection through designation.
However, buildings that are not formally listed but still judged as being of heritage interest are still regarded as being a consideration in the planning process. Almost anything can be listed — it does not have to be a building, Buildings and structures of special historic interest come in a wide variety of forms and types, ranging from telephone boxes and road signs, to castles. Historic England has created twenty broad categories of structures, and published selection guides for each one to aid with assessing buildings and these include historical overviews and describe the special considerations for listing each category.
Both Historic Scotland and Cadw produce guidance for owners, in England, to have a building considered for listing or delisting, the process is to apply to the secretary of state, this can be done by submitting an application form online to Historic England. The applicant does not need to be the owner of the building to apply for it to be listed, full information including application form guidance notes are on the Historic England website.
Historic England assesses buildings put forward for listing or delisting and provides advice to the Secretary of State on the architectural, the Secretary of State, who may seek additional advice from others, then decides whether or not to list or delist the building. After earning a bachelor of degree from Trinity College, Cambridge.
In , he married Lady Diana Spencer and they had two sons, Prince William later to become Duke of Cambridge, and Prince Harry, in , the couple divorced, following well-publicised extramarital affairs. Diana died in a car crash in Paris the following year, in , Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles. Charles has sought to raise awareness of the dangers facing the natural environment. As an environmentalist, he has received awards and recognition from environmental groups around the world.
His support for alternative medicine, including homeopathy, has been criticised by some in the medical community and he has been outspoken on the role of architecture in society and the conservation of historic buildings. Subsequently, Charles created Poundbury, a new town based on his theories. Charles attended his mothers coronation at Westminster Abbey on 2 June , seated alongside his grandmother, as was customary for upper-class children at the time, a governess, Catherine Peebles, was appointed and undertook his education between the ages of five and eight.
Buckingham Palace announced in that Charles would attend school rather than have a private tutor, Charles then attended two of his fathers former schools, Cheam Preparatory School in Berkshire, England, followed by Gordonstoun in the north-east of Scotland. He reportedly despised the school, which he described as Colditz in kilts. Tradition was broken again when Charles proceeded straight from school into university. D'Oyly Carte Opera Company — The company was revived for short seasons and tours from to , and with Scottish Opera it later co-produced two productions.
Gilbert, when that work, Trial by Jury, became a success, Carte put together a syndicate to produce a full-length Gilbert and Sullivan work, The Sorcerer, followed by H. After Pinafore became a sensation, Carte jettisoned his difficult investors and formed a new partnership with Gilbert. The company produced the succeeding ten Gilbert and Sullivan operas and many operas and companion pieces at the Savoy Theatre in London.
The company also mounted tours in Britain, New York and elsewhere, Cartes able assistant, Helen Lenoir, became his wife in and, after his death in , she ran the company until her own death in By this time, it had become a year-round Gilbert and Sullivan touring repertory company, Cartes son Rupert inherited the company. Beginning in , he mounted new seasons in London with new set and costume designs, while continuing the year-round tours in Britain, with the help of the director J.
Gordon and the conductor Isidore Godfrey, Carte ran the company for 35 years. He redesigned the Savoy Theatre in and sponsored a series of recordings over the years that helped to keep the operas popular, after Ruperts death in , his daughter Bridget DOyly Carte inherited the company and hired Frederic Lloyd as general manager. The company continued to tour for 35 weeks each year, issue new recordings and play London seasons of Gilbert and it re-formed in with a legacy left by Bridget DOyly Carte, played short tours and London seasons, and issued some popular recordings.
Some of the performers, over the decades, became stars of their day. The company licensed the operas for performance in Australasia and to numerous amateur troupes in Britain and elsewhere, providing orchestra parts and prompt books for hire. The company kept the Savoy operas in the eye for over a century and left an enduring legacy of production styles. By , Richard DOyly Carte, a musician and ambitious young impresario, had begun producing operettas in London.
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He announced his ambitions on the front of the programme for one of his productions that year, in early , Carte was managing Londons Royalty Theatre. Gilbert, on tour in , Carte had conducted Arthur Sullivans one-act comic opera Cox and Box, which received an London revival.
Gilbert had offered a libretto to Carte about an English courtroom, but at the time Carte knew of no composer available to set it to music. Music hall — Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era circa and lasting until It involved a mixture of songs, comedy, speciality acts. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place and these theatres were designed chiefly so people could consume food and alcohol and smoke tobacco in the auditorium while the entertainment took place.
This differed somewhat from the type of theatre, which until then seated the audience in stalls with a separate bar-room. By the midth century, the halls cried out for many new, as a result, professional songwriters were enlisted to provide the music for a plethora of star performers, such as Marie Lloyd, Dan Leno, Little Tich, and George Leybourne.
Music hall did not adopt its own unique style, the halls had recovered by the start of the First World War and were used to stage charity events in aid of the war effort. Music hall entertainment continued after the war, but became popular due to upcoming Jazz, Swing. Licensing restrictions had also changed, and drinking was banned from the auditorium, a new type of music hall entertainment had arrived, in the form of variety, and many music hall performers failed to make the transition.
Deemed old fashioned and with the closure of many halls, music hall entertainment ceased, Music hall in London had its origins in entertainment provided in the new style saloon bars of public houses during the s. These venues replaced earlier semi-rural amusements provided by fairs and suburban pleasure gardens such as Vauxhall Gardens and these latter became subject to urban development and became fewer and less popular.
The saloon was a room where for a fee or a greater price at the bar, singing, dancing. It is still famous because of an English nursery rhyme, with the somewhat mysterious lyrics, Up and down the City Road In and out The Eagle Thats the way the money goesPop goes the weasel.
The Sensational Story of Eastb You may like to visit the Congress Theatre's own Website here. Read more about the condition. Terms and conditions apply. In the early days plays and light opera including the touring company of the D'Oyly Carte were presented but these gradually gave way to music hall and variety shows.
Other song and supper rooms included the Coal Hole in The Strand, the Cyder Cellars in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, the music hall as we know it developed from such establishments during the s and were built in and on the grounds of public houses. In a theatre, by contrast, the audience was seated in stalls, an exception to this rule was the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton which somehow managed to evade this regulation and served drinks to its customers.
Though a theatre rather than a hall, this establishment later hosted music hall variety acts. Vesta Tilley — Matilda Alice Powles, was an English music hall performer who adopted, at age 11, the stage name Vesta Tilley and who became one of the most famous male impersonators of her era. Her father, known as Harry Ball, was an actor, songwriter.
At the age of six she did her first role in male clothing, billed as The Pocket Sims Reeves and she also performed songs from his repertoire, to add to the illusion. She would come to prefer doing male roles exclusively, saying that I felt that I could express myself better if I were dressed as a boy, under her fathers management, Vesta toured extensively in the provinces, as towns and cities outside London were known.
Successful from the outset, by age 11 her salary supported her parents, the first decade of her career saw her billed most often as the Great Little Tilley. The gender ambiguity of her name was causing problems for audiences, however, so she and she was billed as Vesta Tilley for the first time in April , when performing at the Royal Music Hall in Holborn, London. Vesta referred to both the Roman goddess of hearth and home, and a brand of safety matches, Tilley, early on, Vesta performed the songs of Sims Reeves, and songs written for her by her father.
These included sentimental pieces such as Poor Jo, which had her playing the character of a workhouse child, other sentimental songs would follow, such as Squeeze Her Gently, The Pet of Rotten Row, and Strolling along with Nancy, songs made popular by Reeves. As she got older, she followed other male impersonators into songs where she undertook portraying young men behaving either embarrassingly or badly, among these characters would feature the titular character Burlington Bertie as well as clerks on holiday at the seaside.
These were intended to be comical, and allow the audience to laugh at the inflated egos of these characters, equally comical was the play on her identity as a woman and the subject matter of many of her songs. Aside from the boys, she also had a number of military characters. She also played the boy in a number of pantomimes. She played the role of Pertiboy in Beauty and the Beast at the Birmingham Theatre Royal during the —2 season and she was best known for her titular role in Dick Whittington, a role she reprised throughout her career.
Notably, she appeared in the Drury Lane pantomime for the —3 season production of Sinbad and —91 seasons production of Beauty and the Beast. A true professional, she would spend months preparing the new character types she wanted to represent on stage and these roles had a slightly mocking edge, furthering her popularity among the working class men in her audience. She was wildly popular among women as well, who viewed her as a symbol of independence, newspaper reports of her performances emphasised how popular she was throughout the country, drawing capacity crowds in England, Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man and Wales.
Harry Houdini — Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-American illusionist and stunt performer, noted for his sensational escape acts. He first attracted notice in vaudeville in the US and then as Harry Handcuff Houdini on a tour of Europe, where he challenged police forces to keep him locked up.
Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, in , thousands watched as he tried to escape from special handcuffs commissioned by Londons Daily Mirror, keeping them in suspense for an hour. Another stunt saw him buried alive and only just able to claw himself to the surface, while many suspected that these escapes were faked, Houdini presented himself as the scourge of fake spiritualists.
As President of the Society of American Magicians, he was keen to uphold professional standards and he was also quick to sue anyone who imitated his escape stunts. Houdini made several movies, but quit acting when it failed to bring in money and he was also a keen aviator, and aimed to become the first man to fly a plane in Australia.
The family lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as Rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation, according to the census, the family lived on Appleton Street. He was also a cross country runner in his youth. Weiss incorrectly believed that an i at the end of a name meant like in French, in later life, Houdini claimed that the first part of his new name, Harry, was an homage to Harry Kellar, whom he also admired. Cecile Lodge in New York City. In , he registered for service as Harry Handcuff Houdini.
Houdini began his career in , but had little success. He appeared in a tent act with strongman Emil Jarrow and he performed in dime museums and sideshows, and even doubled as The Wild Man at a circus. Between and , she became a success when she toured France, America, Australia. In , she assisted other performers during the music hall war and took part in demonstrations outside theatres, protesting for better pay, in , she performed her only wartime song Now Youve Got Your Khaki On, which became a favourite among front-line troops. In later life, she was still in demand at music halls and had a success in with her performance of My Old Man.
Privately, she suffered bouts of ill-health and became alcohol-dependent. In , she gave her performance at the Alhambra Theatre, London. She died a few days later at the age of 52, Lloyd was born on 12 February in Hoxton, London. Her father John Wood, was a flower arranger and waiter.
Lloyd was the eldest of nine children and became known within the circle as Tilley. The Wood family were respectable, hard-working, and financially comfortable, Lloyd often took career advice from her mother, whose influence was strong in the family. Along with her sister Alice, she arranged events in which the Wood children performed at the family home and she enjoyed the experience of entertaining her family and decided to form a minstrel act in called the Fairy Bell troupe comprising her brothers and sisters.
Costumed by Matilda, they toured local doss-houses in East London, eager to show off his daughters talent, John secured her unpaid employment as a table singer at the Eagle Tavern in Hoxton, where he worked as a waiter. Among the songs she performed there was My Soldier Laddie, together with her performances at the Eagle, Lloyd briefly contributed to the family income by making babies boots, and, later, curled feathers for hat making.
She was unsuccessful at both and was sacked from the latter after being caught dancing on the tables by the foreman and she returned home that evening and declared that she wanted a permanent career on the stage. He specialised in cockney related humour based on life as a costermonger in London during the Victorian era, owing to this and his ability to write songs, he became known to his audiences as the costers laureate.
Born in London, Chevalier showed an interest in entertainment from an early age through his performances to family. He made his debut on the stage when he was eight, performing in Julius Caesar. Soon after he joined an amateur dramatics group before changing his stage name to Albert Knight. Chevalier joined the music circuit in the s and over the decade became very successful.
His success meant that from the early s he was able to choose which theatres to perform in, as well as in London, Chevalier became popular with audiences in the English provinces which he toured over the length of his career. During the s Chevalier moved from comedy into music composition for straight plays, with a deteriorating health his final appearance was in My Old Dutch at the Lyceum Theatre in The play was based on Chevaliers own song of the name and had some success. The play ran for over a year and Chevalier completed his last performance in November and he died aged 62 and was buried in Abney Park cemetery in the same plot as his son and father in law George Leybourne.
Chevalier was educated at Clanricarde College, Bayswater, and later, St Marys College, from a young age he showed an interest in acting and privately performed scenes from The September Gale for his family when he was eight years old. A year later, on 17 August, and at the venue, he performed some minor scenes from The September Gale. When he was 14 he joined an amateur dramatics group called the Roscius Dramatic Club.
When he left education, and to pay his fees, Chevalier took up a position as a clerk in a newspaper office. It was in that job that his father introduced him to the playwright Dion Boucicault who arranged for a friend to mentor Chevaliers start in the theatre, in Chevalier organised two amateur performances of The Quack Doctor and Handy Andy both of which he produced and starred in. Little Tich — Harry Relph, professionally known as Little Tich, was a 4-footinch tall English music hall comedian and dancer during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
He was best known for his acrobatic and comedic Big-Boot Dance, aside from his music hall appearances, he was also a popular performer in Christmas pantomimes and appeared in them annually at theatres throughout the English provinces. Born in Cudham, Kent, Little Tich began performing aged ten when he developed a dance, in the early s he formed a blackface act and gained popularity with performances at the nearby Rosherville Pleasure Gardens and Barnards Music Hall in Chatham.
He travelled to London and appeared at the Foresters Music Hall in , the terms titchy or titch were later derived from Little Tich, and are used to describe things that are small. In the s he developed the Serpentine Dance and had a success with the Christmas pantomime Babes in the Wood in Manchester during the —90 season. In , he was recruited by the impresario Augustus Harris to appear in that years spectacular Theatre Royal and he starred in a further two productions at the theatre including Little Bo Peep and Robinson Crusoe.
Between and Little Tich performed in his own theatre company, and spent much of his time in Paris. For his music hall acts, he created based on everyday observations. In he suffered a stroke, which was triggered by a blow to the head which he had accidentally received during an evening performance at the Alhambra Theatre. He never recovered fully from the injury, and died the year at his house in Hendon. The Relph family were close and lived in relative affluence, Richard Relph was a committed family man and was known in the village for his sharp business acumen.
His early wealth, which was attributed to a series of successful horse-trading deals, enabled him to purchase his first public house, in he married Sarah Ashenden and they had eight children, she died in