Description

NEWMARKET ROAD
1.
942
(South Side)
No 36 (Arts Theatre Workshop
and Store)
(Formerly listed as Former
Festival Theatre)

TL 4558 NE 5/109A 26.4.50. II*

2.
Former Theatre Royal. 1816. Built at Barnwell because of prohibition
in the University town. The interior is a virtually complete example of
a Georgian theatre with a three-tiered horsehoe auditorium with the galleries
supported on cast iron columns. There is no sign of the original decoration
to the fronts of the galleries, but a painting of the Royal Arms remains
above the proscenium. The theatre was closed in the C19 and used as a
Nonconformist chapel, but it was reopened and again closed in the years
between the two wars. Altered c1926 for Terence Gray by Harold Ridge and Norman Marshall, with the removal of the proscenium arch and the introduction of a cyclorama and a revolving stage. This was one of the earliest uses of this type of modern stage technology pioneered by Gordon Craig in the 1920s (RCHM 277).

Listing NGR: TL4594558775

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Festival Theatre at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q31680911

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)
• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)