Described by the Theatres Trust as one of London’s most lavish ‘sleeping beauties’ the Streatham Hill Theatre has to be the nicest disused theatre in the whole country right now. I have had half an eye on it since Beacon Bingo closed their operation in the theatre back in 2017, however as they kept a small area at the rear of the stalls open as a 'Cashino' slot machine arcade I didn't really imagine the building would be 'explorable' as such. ('cashinos' have alarms right??) Fast forward to May 2022 and it was announced that the building had be sold off to a church group (yeh i know!) and this got me wondering if that meant the end of the slot machines and a possible period of complete disuse and neglect. Well, with recent interest in all things cinema and theatre I happened to be chatting with locals @The_Raw and @mockney reject and dropped this place into the conversation. The_Raw immediately offered to pop down for a quick recce. At first glance it didn't look too promising, the slot machine place was still going and the company running it had a load of their vans parked round back suggesting it was far from disused. Still this didn't seem to put off Mockney and a few weeks later I woke to a 2am message 'Hey mate, i think you better get down here and take some better photos' Epic! Only one problem! Mr Reject had yet again picked a weekend i was due to work 4 consecutive 12 hour shifts to drop the epic.. Thanks mate.. Still, after a bit of negotiation with work for an early finish myself @dweeb and @raisinwing hopped in the car and headed down the next evening with our fingers crossed the fragile access would still be available. Luckily it was!
The theatre has a bit of an interesting history. Originally built in 1929 as one of famed theatre architect W. G. R. Sprague's final designs it was pretty much destroyed during WW2 when it was hit with a V1 flying bomb. Thankfully as it was so popular the decision was made after the war to rebuild it to Sprague's original plans and it reopened in 1950 pretty must the same as it was before the war. It only lasted as a theatre until 1962 when it was turned over to bingo use. Id highly recommend viewing the friends of the theatres web page The Friends of Streatham Hill Theatre (FoSHT) – Save Streatham Hill Theatre for the community for more info and a whole wealth of photos and info, theres a lot on there i didn't bother to photograph in our quite fleeting visit!
Upon entering the building we found ourselves at the rear of the stage area, the stalls and stage have been levelled off with the usual false floor and the rear of the stalls partitioned for the slot machines out front. That however is really as bad as the place gets, everything above here and indeed below was either fantastically dated or lovely and original, i snapped a quick shot before we started looking for a way up to the circle.
The theatre has a bit of an interesting history. Originally built in 1929 as one of famed theatre architect W. G. R. Sprague's final designs it was pretty much destroyed during WW2 when it was hit with a V1 flying bomb. Thankfully as it was so popular the decision was made after the war to rebuild it to Sprague's original plans and it reopened in 1950 pretty must the same as it was before the war. It only lasted as a theatre until 1962 when it was turned over to bingo use. Id highly recommend viewing the friends of the theatres web page The Friends of Streatham Hill Theatre (FoSHT) – Save Streatham Hill Theatre for the community for more info and a whole wealth of photos and info, theres a lot on there i didn't bother to photograph in our quite fleeting visit!
Upon entering the building we found ourselves at the rear of the stage area, the stalls and stage have been levelled off with the usual false floor and the rear of the stalls partitioned for the slot machines out front. That however is really as bad as the place gets, everything above here and indeed below was either fantastically dated or lovely and original, i snapped a quick shot before we started looking for a way up to the circle.
Weirdly we didn't actually find an easy way upstairs at first, in fact all routes seemed to lead down! Heading down through a semi flooded corridor things got a bit surreal for a while. Instead of exploring the mint 20s theatre i was expecting we found ourselves in a bar area that was straight out of 1972.. I honestly couldn't complain tho. For a second i was torn between which bit i was more excited over. Balcony's and boxes or 70s fake street scenes and fake 'cave' stairwells! This basement area was originally a bar serving the 'stalls' punters. (The stalls were the cheaper seats and had their own entrances to keep the riff raff away from the posher circle goers, hence why we were finding it hard to get to the circle itself.) A stalls bar is an unusual thing to see in a cinema, usually cinemas only have a bar serving the circle, but maybe its a bit more common in a theatre? who knows.
Eventually after spending way too long in the basement we headed back up and found the slightly obscure route that took us up to the circle and boxes.
I particularly liked the (presumably) Shakespeare inspired seats and above stage Tannoy speakers0
The circle bar this time.
It was possible to stick our heads into the amazing foyer but sadly the time we had spent downstairs had meant we had lost the daylight for particularly good photos. Hanging around down by the front doors here didn't seem wise seeing as the live part and a rather large bouncer were just the other side of the paper thin wall.
Instead i headed up via another rather convoluted route to access the balcony level. Again these were cheaper seats and had much more mundane entrance stairwells rather than the grandeur of the main lobby. The balcony area appeared to have been out of use for quite some time.. Again a lot of the décor felt quite 1970s so id hazard a guess both balcony and basement didn't last much past the 1980 and since then the place pretty much ran on just the stalls and circle.
Up here the was a third bar, this time with a cracking coffee still. The main issue with the balcony was the lack of lighting. Only a handful of bulbs remained intact making photos tricky. The ceiling was particularly difficult to capture
We had been wondering if the theatre had a projection room. There was certainly nothing particularly evident. A small passenger lift shaft seemed to have been retro fitted at the rear of the rear of the circle and I wondered if this had concealed something but after studying old plans of the place i can safely say it had not. The building has a kind of weird addition to the roof line at the front but on the original plans the lower level of this is marked as a staff room and the upper floor just gives access to the lift motor nowadays.
I snapped another photo from the stalls before heading back stage. Here there is a large stack of dressing rooms built in the traditional manner but tbh they were all completely devoid of anything of interest. We tried to find our way up the fly tower but annoyingly access is from an external stairs and the door is boarded up currently. It was possible to see the remains of the flys and even some old backdrops by peering around the stage areas false ceiling but photographing them proved pretty impossible!
The one last bit of interest was below stage. Here a number of pieces of theatre equipment remain. Several man lifts, orchestra pit and organ lift. All rendered out of action due to the bingo alterations sadly but still interesting to see.
With that our time was up and it was time to get back up to Birmingham for the next mornings 6am start. All that remains to say is a big thanks to Damo and particularly Mockney for their efforts in getting the place done! This is exactly the way i want to see the community working and the reason I posted a big thread full of cinema leads the other day. Local people getting on stuff, doing recces and cracking epic then helping other interested parties to see it too is what this forum is all about. Sadly the access was sealed up the morning after our visit or id be passing it on to more people, instead il just stick up a report and hope it inspires more people to get out there and check their local derps. Hopefully I can replay the favour before too long, theres still a long list!
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