Theatre Royal in Chatham once played host to Charlie Chaplin, Gracie Fields, George Formby and Stan Laurel set for new chapter as luxury flats
06:00, 27 April 2021
Once a jewel in the crown during the smoke-filled era of pre-war theatre, patrons and stars gathered from all over to visit the Theatre Royal in Chatham.
Its long demise into partial demolition, obscurity, conversion into a shop and then near total destruction has made way for a grand return for the former venue.
Now home to three new luxury apartments, the grandiose of the Theatre Royal is back, albeit unrecognisable from its pomp following its late Victorian birth.
The theatre opened in 1899 and was built and designed by architect George Bond who had also designed Chatham Town Hall (now The Brook theatre), St Andrew's Church, the Masonic Hall and the River Medway Conservancy Board Offices.
Located on the corner of Manor Road and the High Street, the central location of the Theatre Royal soon made it an extremely popular destination and was even bigger than the London Palladium and one of the first theatres to use electric lighting.
The ornate and rounded auditorium – which is now long since demolished – rose steeply from the stage and was once able to hold 3,000 people across two tiers and eight boxes.
The layout and finish has been described as typical of the late Victorian era emphasising class and ensuring people with a particular class of ticket did not mix with those paying more or less money.
There were separate entrances, stairs and lounges for the different fee-paying attendees and the experience and decor altered depending on whether you had paid a higher amount.
It was built for Messrs C and L Barnard, who had been running their Palace Theatre of Varieties from a site opposite the new Theatre Royal since 1886.
But just eight months into its life, a fire ripped through the building, almost destroying the entire structure but leaving the main walls intact.
The Barnards rebuilt the inside to an altered design from Bond's original and reopened on Christmas Eve 1900.
In relative terms, the theatre had a short lifespan but has remained a fixture and landmark in Chatham town centre since it opened and the final curtain fell in 1955. It even later became a Halfords store.
In that time however, the venue had welcomed stars and household names from stage and screen including Charlie Chaplin, Gracie Fields, George Formby and Stan Laurel, to name just a few.
The theatre continued to host pantomimes throughout its lifetime and was also the home of an annual circus which came to town.
Animals were paraded through the streets before they were taken to huge cages housed beneath the stage.
The 122-year-old building fell into significant disrepair after it was abandoned following its closure.
After shutting as a theatre, the building sub-divided into retail space and was used as a warehouse.
The building lay as a shell and an abandoned wreck throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
The Theatre Royal Chatham Trust managed to purchase the site to save it from total demolition in the 1980s and had plans to revive the old building but as costs spiralled to £20 million, members were forced to abandon their plans and the site was sold off in 2004.
The former auditorium was demolished in 2009 and the back of the building cleared to make way for the newly titled Theatre Quarter development of flats and apartments.
In 2013, major work was completed on renovating the former theatre's foyers, bars and front of house areas with Medway Council planning to use the space to house new bars and restaurants.
The ground floor opened as the Pasha Mezze Turkish restaurant in 2016.
Plans for the conversion of the new luxury flats, which were approved by councillors in March 2020, include provision for a new smaller ground floor restaurant space.
