Old Orchard Street Theatre

The Old Orchard Street Theatre in Bath has lived three remarkable lives: Georgian playhouse, Roman Catholic church, and — since the 1860s — Masonic Hall. Built on the site of the old orchard of Bath Abbey, the Grade II listed building is one of the most historically layered in a city full of history, and for half a century in the middle of its story it was one of the principal centres of Catholic worship in the West Country.

Bath's first theatre had opened in 1705, a small, cramped affair by George Trim that made little profit before its demolition in 1738, and a New Theatre in Kingsmead Street ran from 1723 to 1751. In 1747 the actor John Hippisley proposed a proper new theatre, revising his scheme in 1748 just before his death; the planning passed to John Palmer, a local brewer and chandler, with Thomas Jelly, and the site was chosen by John Wood the Elder, the architect who laid out so much of Georgian Bath. Construction in Old Orchard Street began in 1748 and was completed by John Powell in 1750, producing a theatre sixty feet long by forty wide. Known as the St James Theatre, it opened on 27 October 1750 under Palmer's management with Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2.

By the Bath Theatre Act of 1768 Palmer obtained a royal patent, making this the first theatre outside London entitled to call itself "Theatre Royal". His son, another John Palmer, ran it alongside the Theatre Royal in King Street, Bristol — now home of the Bristol Old Vic — with a single acting company shared between the two cities. To shuttle actors, stagehands and props quickly between Bristol and Bath, Palmer set up his own coach service; the experience convinced him that such a service could carry the nation's letters, and after he was appointed Comptroller-General of the Post Office in 1785, his theatre logistics became the model for the countrywide mail coach system. Management passed to William Keasberry and William Wyatt Dimond, players of the company. The stage's alumni were glittering: John Henderson joined in 1772 and became a popular leading man before conquering London; Sarah Siddons, the greatest tragedienne of the age, was in the company between 1778 and 1782 — during which years the theatre staged an increasing number of plays written by women, a development attributed partly to her presence — and Robert William Elliston made one of his earliest appearances in 1791. Jane Austen knew the Orchard Street theatre in its final years, and it is believed to be the original of the theatre described in chapter twelve of Northanger Abbey. The playhouse closed in 1805 when the present Theatre Royal opened.

After four years standing empty, the building began its second life. In 1809 it was converted into a Roman Catholic chapel by the authorities of Prior Park and Downside Abbey and consecrated, the stage, gallery and boxes removed in an adaptation by the Bath architect Henry Goodridge. After the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829 swept away many of the legal restrictions Catholics had endured since the Act of Uniformity, the chapel became a church in full standing and was the site of episcopal ordinations, including that of Peter Augustine Baines. The vaults that had once stored theatrical scenery were converted into stone tombs, and 286 bodies were interred where the props of Siddons's stage had lain. The congregation outgrew the building, and in the 1850s and early 1860s Charles Francis Hansom designed and built the new St John's Church; in 1863 the congregation transferred there, and most of the bodies in the vaults were moved to a new churchyard.

In 1866 the building and adjacent properties in Pierrepont Place were bought for £636 by the Masonic Royal Cumberland Lodge No. 53 as their meeting hall, beginning the third act that continues today. Damaged in the Baedeker Blitz of 1942, the building — now known as the Old Theatre Royal — serves as the meeting place of eight Craft Lodges and fifteen other Masonic degrees, and is available for functions and occasionally used once more for performances: the old playhouse-turned-church still gathering audiences, congregations and brethren under one Georgian roof.