Author Archives: Mike Higginbottom

Well-kept station

Great Malvern railway station, Worcestershire

Great Malvern railway station was built as the arrival and departure point for the elite visitors who flocked to the district to take water cures in the mid-Victorian period.

The spa resort thrived from the arrival of the Worcester & Hereford Railway in 1860, and the station at Great Malvern, opened in 1862, was the major hub for visitors, local inhabitants and freight. There were two other less important stations, Malvern Link to the north and Malvern Wells (closed in 1965) to the south.

The character of the station, like the rest of the town, was heavily influenced by Lady Emily Foley (1805-1900), the widowed Lady of the Manor, whose late husband’s will gave her independence and considerable influence. She disliked travelling through the two tunnels on the line, at Ledbury and Colwall, so she habitually travelled by road between her country seat at Stoke Edith and her private waiting room at Great Malvern.

The Gothic buildings at Great Malvern station were built in local Malvern Rag stone and designed by a local architect, Edmund Wallace Elmslie. He was responsible for the road bridge at the north end of the platforms and the remarkable iron columns which support the canopies on both platforms. The beautifully restored and brightly painted capitals are in twelve different designs, hand-forged in wrought iron, and serve to direct rainwater down the interior of each column.

Edmund Wallace Elmslie at the same time designed the Imperial Hotel across Avenue Road from the station. It was the largest hotel in Malvern, owned by the Great Malvern Hotel Company, chaired by the hydrotherapy pioneer Dr James Manby Gully (1808-1883).

Its elaborate Gothic architecture is enlivened by carvings by the Worcester sculptor William Forsyth (c1834-1915), whose brother James created, among much else, the huge Perseus Fountain at Witley Court.

In 1919 the hotel was bought for £32,500 by Miss Greenslade and Miss Poulton, the two founders of Malvern Girls’ College which dated from small beginnings in 1893 elsewhere in Malvern. A complex succession of amalgamations with Lawnside, The Abbey and St James’s School (all of which were founded by women) eventually created Malvern St James in 2006.

The hotel was directly connected with the station platform by a gently sloping covered passageway of brick, wood and corrugated iron which is known as The Worm, for reasons which are obvious when looking at it from the overbridge. It enabled guests with limited mobility to reach the hotel from the railway. There is a shorter underground goods tunnel north of passenger walkway.

There’s a regular train service to Great Malvern from Worcester and Hereford, and a bus-service up the hill to the town centre.

Lady Foley’s former private waiting room operated as Lady Foley’s Tea Room until it closed in October 2023.

Though there was a project in 2017 to restore The Worm, it’s currently inaccessible for safety reasons.

The water cure

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The Yorkshire town of Ilkley had a modest reputation as a spa from the early eighteenth century [No additives | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times] on the remarkable attribute that its mineral water was practically devoid of minerals.

Vinzenz Priessnitz (1799-1851), a Silesian peasant farmer, developed and patented hydrotherapy treatment, a system of baths, compresses and treatments involving wrapping patients in wet sheets, at Gräfenburg in Silesia in 1829. His procedures were satisfyingly uncomfortable, yet less life-threatening than other medical practices.

Captain Richard Tappin Claridge’s publication Hydropathy; or The Cold Water Cure, as practised by Vincent Priessnitz… (1842) encouraged the development of the first British hydropathic establishment at Malvern where the water had long been “famous for containing just nothing at all”.

Ilkley was quick to follow, when a consortium of Leeds businessmen opened a magnificent Scottish Baronial hydro named Ben Rhydding in 1844.

Ben Rhydding Hydropathic Establishment from “Ilkley, Ancient and Modern … Eighty illustrations” – PICRYL – Public Domain Media Search Engine Public Domain Search

The first resident physician, a Silesian, Dr Anthony Rischanek, left under some kind of a cloud, about which he harboured resentment for the rest of his life. He was succeeded by a leading proponent of the water-cure, Dr William Macleod, who established at Ben Rhydding the rigorous, wholesome lifestyle which initially characterised hydropathy.

The success of Ben Rhydding inevitably encouraged competitors. Wells House was established in 1853, at a cost of £30,000 in competition to Ben Rhydding, offering many of the same facilities at comparable prices.

The four-square turreted building, opened in 1856, was designed by Cuthbert Brodrick, who was at that time engaged in building Leeds Town Hall and would later create the Grand Hotel, Scarborough.

Smaller, less expensive hydros followed. Craiglands, which opened in 1859, boasted Dr Macleod’s services as “consulting physician”. Charging around £2 12s 0d per week, about a pound less than the Ben Rhydding and Wells House, Craiglands was repeatedly enlarged, until the original plain classical structure sprouted a dour and domineering Scottish Baronial extension.

The Troutbeck was financed by the then resident physician from Wells House, Dr Edmund Smith, and opened about a year before his death in 1864. Its medical practitioners were brought in from Wells House, including a Dr Harrison who combined hydropathic treatments with galvanism.

Other Ilkley hydros included the Grove (c1870, later the Spa), supervised by Dr Scott from Wells House, Sunset View (by 1871), Rockwood (1871), Marlborough House (1878), Stoney Lea (1883), run by a former bathman from Ben Rhydding, Mr Emmott, and Moorlands (1897).

Steadily towards the end of the nineteenth century the hydros’ therapeutic purpose was diluted by increasing demand from guests for leisure facilities. Chambers’ Encyclopaedia of 1906 commented that “most [so-called hydros] originally started with [the] full equipment for treatment, including a resident physician…but many now are merely high-class country boarding-houses”.

In the twentieth century every one of the Ilkley establishments declined and closed. Ben Rhydding closed permanently at the start of the Second World War and was demolished in 1955. After wartime requisition Wells House became a college of further education and is now luxury apartments; Craiglands is now a hotel and Troutbeck was until recently a care home. The Spa and Rockwood were converted into flats, and Marlborough House and Stoney Lea have been demolished.

Memorial of Vinzenz Priessnitz (1799-1851), formerly at Ben Rhydding, now at Canker Well, Ilkley, West Yorkshire

Water is best

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Rose Garrard, Malvhina drinking fountain, Great Malvern, Worcestershire

Great Malvern is a pleasant place. It’s populated by smart-looking ladies with Waitrose carrier bags and relaxed gents sitting around reading hardback books indoors or outdoors according to the weather. It’s long been a place to retire to, whether transitorily or permanently.

“Malvern” is a portmanteau placename for a cluster of small settlements – Great Malvern, Little Malvern, West Malvern, Malvern Wells and Malvern Link – all of which lie at the foot of the Malvern Hills ridge, where ancient Pre-Cambrian rocks provide prolific quantities of pure water from as many as 240 natural springs.

The name itself derives from Old Welsh, meaning “bald hill” and in modern Welsh rendered as moelfryn. This is associated with the name of a Gaelic goddess Malvhina, who was resurrected from obscurity by the local writer and photographer Charles Frederick Grindrod (1847-1910) and is commemorated by Rose Garrard’s 1998 fountain on Belle Vue Terrace.

Great Malvern grew up around the impressive eleventh-century Priory, of which the Perpendicular church survives because it was bought by the parishioners after the Dissolution. The only other remnant of the priory is the gatehouse, the home of the Malvern Museum of Local History.

Malvern water was esteemed from the seventeenth century, but was not widely known outside the local area. Dr John Wall (1708-1776) promoted it in a pamphlet entitled Experiments and observations on the Malvern Water (1756), which a critic summarised in an ironic couplet:

The Malvern water, says Doctor John Wall,
Is famed for containing just nothing at all.

We must remember that until the nineteenth century, pure water was a rarity. Most people drank small beer, cider or mead if they could get it. Tea, coffee and drinking chocolate were outlandish luxuries, accessible only to the very rich.

Gradually, through the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century, Malvern’s trade in its natural water grew.

The two most celebrated Malvern wells are St Ann’s Well which the Lady of the Manor, Lady Emily Foley (1805-1900) encouraged by extending the existing building in 1841 and, in Malvern Wells, the Holy Well which became the base for Schweppes’ bottling plant from 1850. Both these wells specifically made Malvern water available to local people.

The district was transformed by the arrival in 1842 of Dr James Wilson (1807-1867) and Dr James Manby Gully (1808-1883), leading exponents of hydrotherapy, the highly popular but ultimately controversial water treatment developed by Dr Vinzenz Priessnitz (1799-1851) at Grafenburg, Silesia.

The pair set up clinics in Malvern (Holyrood House for women and Tudor House for men) and were joined by other practitioners to make the area famous.

The railway from Worcester to Malvern Link opened in 1859, and a succession of distinguished figures – among them Charles Darwin and Florence Nightingale – visited and took away glowing recommendations of the benefits of taking the Malvern waters. Indeed, Malvern water has been preferred by British monarchs from Queen Elizabeth I to Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Victoria refused to travel without it.

Enthusiasm for being wrapped in wet blankets at the crack of dawn declined by the beginning of the twentieth century, but Malvern’s quiet charms remained attractive, and the hydros and large residences were easily converted to boarding schools, of which Malvern College (1862), Abbey College (1874) and Malvern St James (1893) remain in operation.

As an education centre, Malvern encouraged cultural activities. Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934), who was born near Worcester and grew up in the city, spent much of his life in and around Malvern and Hereford: ELGAR – The Elgar Trail. Rose Gifford’s Elgar Fountain (2000) on Belle Vue Terrace incorporates a statue of the composer.

The Head of English at Malvern College, George Sayer (1914-2005), knew both C S Lewis (1898-1963) and J R R Tolkien (1892-1973). Lewis had been a student of George Sayer, who became his biographer, and he introduced his Oxford University colleague Tolkien to Sayer and to Malvern and its hills. C S Lewis is said to have been inspired to write the opening of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by a snowy street lit by Great Malvern’s characteristic gas lamps.

Malvern is a healthy, comfortable place whether you’re growing towards adulthood or reaping the rewards of a working life, and in between it’s an admirable base for exploring a beautiful part of England, resonant with history and culture.

Note: The Malvern Museum of Local History is closed for refurbishment from November 2025 and is planned to reopen on March 28th 2026: Welcome to Malvern Museum – Malvern Museum of Local History.

Monongahela Incline

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The great steel city of Pittsburgh is built at the confluence of two rivers with Native American names – the Monongahela and the Allegheny.

The south bank of the Monongahela is precipitous and coal-bearing, useful for supplying the expanding industries but impractical for residential development until engineers adapted mining technology to construct what Americans call “inclines”, steep cable-hauled lifts for both passengers and freight.

Ultimately there were seventeen of these useful facilities, though not all of them operated at the same time: List of inclines in Pittsburgh – Wikipedia.

The two survivors – located almost a mile apart – are the Monongahela (1870) and Duquesne (1877) Inclines. They were both included in the National Register of Historic Places and designated Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmarks in the 1970s and serve the convenience of local residents as well as giving benefit to tourists seeking a spectacular view of the city’s central business district, the Golden Triangle.

The two Castle Shannon Inclines (1890/1892) originated from coalmining infrastructure but most were purpose-built, often encouraged by German-Americans who remembered the stanseilbahnen [cable railways] in their native country.

The Monongahela Incline was designed by the Prussian-born engineer John J Endres, assisted by his daughter Caroline (1846-1930) who is regarded as the first female engineer in the USA, and who married her father’s Hungarian-born assistant, Samuel Diescher (1839-1915). She designed the Mount Oliver Incline (1871) and he was responsible for at least eight of the other Pittsburgh inclines, including the Duquesne Incline.

Both the surviving inclines served freight. John Endres and Samuel Diescher designed a separate Monongahela Freight Incline on 10ft-gauge track. It opened in 1880 and operated until road improvements rendered it redundant. It closed in 1935 and its track-bed is visible alongside the existing passenger track.

Visitors to Pittsburgh find the Monogahela Incline easier to reach, across the Smithfield Bridge from downtown and past the Station Square shopping centre. It’s adjacent to the Light Rapid Transit station at Station Square: Welcome to the Monongahela Incline’s Flowpage.

The Duquesne Incline was rescued in 1963 by what became the Society for the Preservation of the Duquesne Heights Incline and has been restored back to its original condition: Official site of the Duquesne Incline.

Redmires Conduit

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The Sheffield Waterworks Company is most remembered for the collapse of the company’s Dale Dike Dam, which inundated the Loxley and Don Valleys, killing at least 250 people in March 1864.

But for this catastrophe the company might be celebrated for its enterprise in bringing fresh drinking water to the town, following its incorporation in 1830.

The oldest of all the water-supply reservoirs that served Sheffield is still in water. The Old Great Dam of 1785 is now the lake in Crookes Valley Park.

The Sheffield Waterworks Company first built Hadfield Reservoir west of Sheffield at Crookes in 1833. In response to inexorable continuing demand, three additional reservoirs opened at Redmires, far out of town, in 1836, 1849 and 1854.

The Redmires water was carried to Crookes by a conduit begun in 1836, running for 4½ miles mostly in the open, with a thirty-foot-high aqueduct (demolished after 1950) across the Tapton valley and a 1,200-foot tunnel, three feet in diameter, at the lower end.

Calvin Payne, whose explorations of Sheffield’s buried utilities are well-known through his “Drainspotting” walks, began to explore the conduit in 2023 and enlisted members of the Sheffield History forum.

Calvin has shown that it’s possible to explore much of the conduit’s line and has collaborated with Wobbly Runner, a highly skilled videographer, to reveal that this prodigious engineering undertaking for its date has largely survived, hidden in plain sight, for nearly two hundred years.

Video technology provides the tools to mix maps and aerial photographs, drone imagery and commentary in a permanent record that’s a valuable legacy for the future: Hidden in Plain Sight: The 19th-Century Water Channel That Still Crosses Sheffield’s Hills.

The South Yorkshire Local Heritage List description provides a succinct summary of the conduit’s history, together with images and a map showing the surviving lengths of its course: Sheffield Water Works Company conduit remains – Sheffield History Chat – Sheffield History – Sheffield Memories.

The conduit was used for water supply until 1909, and the Hadfield Reservoir was replaced by a covered reservoir on part of the site in 1950. The remainder of its area now provides facilities for the Sheffield Waterworks Sports Club.

Its visible presence is limited to the names nearby of Reservoir Road and Conduit Road.

It’s ironic that one of the most significant features of Sheffield’s infrastructure is largely unknown to local inhabitants and visitors. It deserves signposting, interpreting and commemorating, as part of the city’s heritage and a resource for people to explore and enjoy.

The Spiegelhalter Gap

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Former Wickham’s Department Store, Mile End Road, London

East Londoners will be familiar with the eccentric façade of the former Wickham’s department store on the Mile End Road.

I’d seen pictures of the building repeatedly in magazines and books about London, and I was so intrigued I went out of my way to seek it out when I was in London.

The story has been told many times.

The Wickham family ran a drapery business at 69-73 Mile End Road and in the early 1890s they persuaded their neighbour at 75, the Spiegelhalter family, to allow them to expand by moving to 81 Mile End Road.

The Spiegelhalters were German immigrants who arrived in the East End in 1828 and prospered as clockmakers and jewellers. Otto Spiegelhalter (1845-1902) and his wife Emilia raised fifteen children, of whom three sons carried on the business after his death. Their family presence on the Mile End Road had powerful emotional significance for their extended family.

A generation later, after the First World War when the Spiegelhalter family changed its name to Salter, the Wickhams, intending to build a store to rival Selfridges, had taken over the entire block except number 81, which the Salters insisted on keeping.

The Wickhams commissioned T Jay Evans & Son to design a grand classical building to fill the entire block without waiting for the Salters to agree to move out.

The result was that the Wickhams’ building was constructed around the little three-storey jewellery shop and so both facades remain to this day.

Wickhams had sold out to Great Universal Stores in 1951 and the Mile End Road business closed in the 1960s. The Salter family, still using the Spiegelhalter name for business purposes, closed their shop in 1981. It became an off-licence, and in due course became derelict.

Sinead Campbell provides more detail in this article – Wickham’s Department Store: The Harrods of the East End – and there is more history of the Spiegelhalter/Salter family at Shop | Spiegelhalter Family History | Yorkbeach.

The entire complex is now Dept W of Queen Mary University, for which the architects of the refurbishment, Buckley Gray Yeoman (BGY), were persuaded by popular demand to retain the Spiegelhalter façade, behind which nothing original remains: Council backs controversial plans for East End oddity.

There’s a curious anomaly about the stand-off that led to this landmark.

The colonnades on each side of the central tower of the Wickham store have seven bays with six columns, and the Spiegelhalter shop breaks the continuity at the junction with Wickhams’ entrance.

It’s clear that, once construction started, even if the Salters had relented and sold their property, the Wickhams had no way of incorporating no 81 without destroying the symmetry of their imposing façade.

Diplomacy, the art of handling affairs without arousing hostility, requires compromise. We see in present-day global affairs how obduracy makes it impossible to arrive at a solution that satisfies all parties.

69-89 Mile End Road stands as a mute, subtle reminder that resistance to taking account of others satisfies no-one.

As Winston Churchill repeatedly said (apparently borrowing the phrase from Arthur Balfour), “jaw-jaw is better than war-war”.

Save Derby Hippodrome?

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Hippodrome Theatre, Derby – seating newly reupholstered (1993)

Sometimes, when news breaks of a historic building been damaged or lost by corporate vandalism I think the UK’s legislative protection for heritage is unfit for purpose.

That’s not actually true. It could work if it was applied seriously: Demolition Of Listed Buildings: Is It Legal? – Christopher David Design – Architecture & Design Solutions In Surrey.

A restricted form of protection for ancient monuments has existed in England and Wales since 1882 but the widespread destruction of towns and cities in the Second World War triggered the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947 providing blanket protection to listed buildings.

There are potentially severe penalties for damaging, destroying or carrying out unauthorised works on a listed building: a Crown Court can impose an unlimited fine and/or two years in prison, and can issue a confiscation order to reclaim profits made from the offence.

The greatest threat to heritage buildings is, inevitably, money – the shortage of public money and the excess of corporate and private fortunes.

A league table of heritage-crime offences up to 2018 indicates that even the heaviest “unlimited” fines are pocket money to property developers and affluent private individuals: HISTORIC BUILDINGS PROSECUTION FINES.

Local authorities, starved of funds for over fifteen years, struggle to preserve education, adult social care and housing and much else. Preservation of old buildings comes a long way down their priorities.

Marie Clements’, the Victorian Society’s Communications and Media Manager, highlights the lack of staff to protect threatened buildings in one of the nation’s largest cities, Birmingham: News from the Victorian Society | Heritage skills crisis in local government.

One of the most instructive controversies over a building that remained intact until less than twenty years ago is the Derby Hippodrome, which earned its keep from opening as a theatre in 1914 until it closed as a bingo club in 2007, the year after it was listed Grade II.

It was acquired by Mr Christopher Anthony who after a small fire proceeded to repair the damage by taking an excavator to the roof: Bringing the house down | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times. Mr Anthony was eventually awarded a conditional discharge after admitting ordering work on the building without permission, and later went into administration.

The theatre has ever since stood open to the elements while well-meaning bodies made repeated attempts to set up a restoration programme, led by the Derby Hippodrome Restoration Trust (formed in 2010), joined later by the Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust and the Theatres Trust, and overseen by Derby City Council.

These efforts were hampered by the difficulty of identifying the building’s current owners.

Companies House lists businesses trading with the name Christopher or Chris Anthony but no such individual of that name is listed: CHRISTOPHER ANTHONY PROPERTY SERVICES LIMITED people – Find and update company information – GOV.UK.

Blake Finance Ltd is repeatedly mentioned in the local press as being responsible for the Hippodrome, but the actual connection with the Derby Hippodrome is opaque: Hippodrome Theatre: Urgent works notice needs to be served on owner but who is that? | Derbyshire Live.

A succession of fires in May 2025 prompted Derby City Council to undertake a rapid, radical demolition of the remains of the proscenium and front stalls on safety grounds.

Historic England, the Derby Hippodrome Restoration Trust, Derby Civic Society and Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust challenged this action within forty-eight hours, and work stopped.

An urban explorer, MotionlessMike, has posted a collection of images from May 2023 to show how much of the building remained until the recent series of what many believe were arson attacks: Report – – Derby Hippodrome – The End (2025) | Theatres and Cinemas | 28DaysLater Urban Exploring Forums.

Contributors to the Save Derby Hippodrome Facebook stream [SAVE DERBY HIPPODROME | Facebook] include individuals who clearly understand the technicalities of demolition and neighbours who witnessed the successive demolitions that have overtaken the structure.

There’s a comprehensive survey and discussion of the Hippodrome scandal by John Forkin at And so, the Derby Hippodrome may soon be no more… – Marketing Derby.

And so the remnants of this Grade-II listed once fully restorable theatre remain, and its supporters are yet trying to find a way of saving them: Theatre at Risk Derby Hippodrome demolished.

Second Lieutenant Iowerth Ap Roland Owen (1896-1917)

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Family tomb of Iorwerth ap Roland Owen (1896-1917), Anfield Cemetery, Liverpool

Walking through Liverpool’s Anfield Cemetery, I noticed a neat monument topped by a Gothic spire, commemorating the Owen family, on which one panel of the square base carries a carved portrait of their airman son Iowerth Ap Roland who was killed in action in 1917.

The magic of Google connected me with the research of Louise McTigue, who in its early days contributed to the informative blog of the funeral directors Sarsfield Memorials Liverpool: Blog – Sarsfield Memorials LiverpoolSarsfield Memorials Liverpool | The Oldest Family Run Monumental Masons In Liverpool.

Iowerth’s father Dr Roland Owen came from Anglesey but he and his wife Margaret lived in Seaforth on the northern edge of Liverpool.

Iowerth joined the Officers’ Training Corps at his public school, Mill Hill, and though he intended to qualify in medicine at London University he put his studies on hold in 1915, joined the Inns of Court OTC and applied for a commission in the Royal Flying Corps where he was awarded his wings after six months’ training.

He immediately left for France and on the morning of May 7th 1917 he set off on a photo-reconnaissance mission from Savy airfield to Arras where he and his observer Air Mechanic Reginald Hickling were overpowered by five German planes.

It seems that Reginald Hickling was killed instantly, yet Iowerth Owen, though he was shot in the head and chest, managed to land the plane successfully before passing out. He was bundled into an ambulance but died without regaining consciousness. He was twenty. He served in France for less than a month.

The two British airmen’s nemesis was a protégé of Manfred von Richthofen, the “Red Baron”. Leutnant Karl Allmenröder in a short career as a fighter pilot claimed thirty victories before he himself was shot down on June 26th 1917 aged twenty-one. He too was a medical student.

Iowerth Owen is buried in St Catherine’s British Military Cemetery, Arras, and commemorated on his parents’ memorial in Anfield.

Reginald Hickling, a policeman’s son who worked as a gardener, was buried at Albuera Cemetery at Bailleul-Sire-Berthoult in the Pas de Calais. He was aged 29. A week after his funeral his brother Frederick, a Quartermaster Sergeant in the 2/8th Worcestershire Regiment, was mentioned in dispatches.

Karl Allmenröder was buried in the Evangelical Cemetery, Wald, Germany. His reputation as an air ace encouraged the Nazi government to name streets after him. All these streets were renamed after 1945 and he has no public memorial.

In a time of peace these three men would have lived their lives without harming anyone. Indeed, in their different ways they’d have made the world a better place.

Their contemporary Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) called this waste of humanity “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori” – “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”.

Nottingham Playhouse

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When I visited Nottingham Playhouse recently to see my friend Andrea in a superlative production of Aaron Sorkin’s play based on Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird [To Kill A Mockingbird] I felt an immediate sense of nostalgia when I entered the auditorium.

When the Playhouse opened in 1963 I was in the middle of my grammar-school education and by the time we reached the sixth form the following year our English teachers had formed a rota to take us by coach once a month on a Friday evening to see whatever was on in the Playhouse’s opening seasons which were directed principally by John Neville (1925-2011).

Neville shared his role of artistic director at first with Frank Dunlop (b1927), who went on to found the Young Vic in 1969, and the polymathic Peter Ustinov (1921-2004). Between them they brought to Nottingham a broad range of classic drama and a scintillating troupe of talented actors.

Therefore, in our teens, we were privileged to see – live on stage – not only John Neville’s Richard II, Oedipus and Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, but the twenty-something Judi Dench as Margery Pinchwife in William Wycherley’s bawdy Restoration comedy The Country Wife, which had us rolling about in our front-row seats, even if some of us didn’t at first twig the pun in the title.

These opportunities were unrepeatable: Neville resigned in 1969 because the theatre’s grant was repeatedly frozen; nowadays theatre seat-prices are elevated beyond most school budgets, especially when big-name performers are cast. Indeed, Nottingham Playhouse runs a laudable 50:50 Appeal, which enables audiences to donate the cost of tickets for local people who otherwise wouldn’t experience live theatre: 50:50 Appeal – Nottingham Playhouse.

I’m pleased to see that Peter Moro’s theatre, with the circular drum of the auditorium prominent above the rectilinear outer shell, has been respectfully restored: Moro had been involved in the Royal Festival Hall project, and for Nottingham created a conventional proscenium theatre that encloses its audience so they share the same space as the actors.

And on the night I was there the To Kill a Mockingbird tour filled every seat in the house as it storms around the country on its way to a West End run in August 2026: TOUR — To Kill A Mockingbird.

The Abbeydale Picture House – Sheffield’s premier suburban cinema

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My latest book, The Abbeydale Picture House: Sheffield’s premier suburban cinema, is now on sale. It’s a long story, but a short book, telling the history of a much-loved building, the people who worked there and the thousands whose lives were brightened by it from 1920 onwards.

The Abbeydale Picture House has always been exceptional among local cinemas. Its architect, Pascal J Stienlet, designed the auditorium and stage as a theatre, so the balcony embraces the proscenium and the stage has a fly-tower and a suite of dressing rooms which I’ve come to suspect were never completed.

The building sits on the edge of a steep cliff overlooking the River Sheaf, so the space under the stage was fitted out as a billiard saloon, and the ballroom beneath the auditorium had a sprung floor and a disconcerting sloping ceiling to match the rake of the seating above.

Its original proprietors struggled in the face of post-war inflation and quickly handed the place over to a more experienced team who were involved in two other cinemas south of the city centre.

It took until the 1930s for the shareholders to receive a modest dividend, but from then till the late 1950s the Abbeydale brought in crowds to watch films, dance and play billiards. The Abbeydale offered warmth, comfort and style. A whole generation of local people met their life-partner under its roof.

As times changed and suburban cinemas went out of favour, it was the third last suburban cinema in Sheffield to close, in 1975.

It was quickly adapted as an office-equipment showroom, but since then attempts to find it a practical purpose have repeatedly failed, until True North Brew Co acquired it at the beginning of 2025 and made firm plans to restore and refurbish it as a multipurpose entertainment centre – which was exactly its function in the 1920s: Abbeydale Ballroom | Sheffield’s new social space | pool hall.

I’ve been involved in the Abbeydale’s heritage since the 1980s, and had the good fortune to build my knowledge on Dr Clifford Shaw’s extensive research, and on oral-history interviews carried out by a Sheffield University postgraduate student, Holly Dann, both of whom talked to people who remembered the Abbeydale since before the Second World War.

It’s arguably the only surviving first-generation cinema in Sheffield that’s physically intact, architecturally interesting and has an abundance of stories about the people for whom it was and is a landmark in their lives.

Of the fifty-two cinemas that were operating within the then city boundary in the first month of the Second World War, the Abbeydale is the only one that has so many tales to tell and has the potential to bring enjoyment to future generations of Sheffield people.

A participant on a recent Heritage Open Days tour remarked, “I’ve passed this place hundreds of times and never realised how beautiful it is.”

The Abbeydale Picture House: Sheffield’s premier suburban cinema has 56 A5 pages in full colour.

To see sample pages, please click here.

To purchase, please click here, or send a cheque for £10.00 per copy payable to Mike Higginbottom at 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ. Contact: 0114-242-0951 or 07946-650672 or mike@mikehigginbottominterestingtimes.co.uk

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