Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds

William Wilkins opened the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, in 1819. In fact, the Grade I-listed building is one of only three surviving theatres in Britain. It has always been a popular venue, especially with actors, who love the Georgian forestage that puts them right in among the audience.

The Theatre Royal closed in 1903, re-opened in 1906, was bought by the local brewer Greene King in 1920, and then ceased operating as a theatre, in 1925. Enthusiasm gathered in the 1960s for its restoration, and in 1975 Greene King, although still owners of the freehold, gave the theatre to the National Trust. The Trust’s aim was to return it to a working theatre, but very much as it would have been in Georgian times.

The project was led by architects Levitt Bernstein; the £5.3 million restoration was started in 2005, and Luke Hughes & Company got the call that same year. The fully refurbished theatre opened in September 2007.

Luke Hughes replaced all the seating; the plush tip-ups in the pit gave way to straight, three-seater bench versions of the Academy chair, originally designed for the Royal Academy of Music in 1990. The theatre’s management were delighted to discover that the new space planning had space for up to nine seats in some of the boxes, where before there had been only six. In a theatre that holds only 360 people, that made (and makes) a big difference to the revenues.

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