King's Theatre, Hammersmith

The King’s Theatre once stood on the corner of Hammersmith Road and Rowan Road in Hammersmith, West London. Built in 1902 as a music hall, it seated three thousand people and became a lively centre for variety shows and pantomimes. W. G. R. Sprague designed the building for the entrepreneur J. B. Mulholland, who also built the New Wimbledon Theatre. Its first production was a pantomime of Cinderella which opened on Boxing Day 1902. The theatre’s stage hosted singers, comedians and dancers who drew large crowds every week. In 1954 the BBC took over the building while their main Television Theatre was being modernised. For five years it served as a temporary television studio, broadcasting programmes to London viewers. After the work finished, the BBC used the theatre as a recording studio for radio programmes. The corporation sold the building in 1959 and it was demolished four years later. Hammersmith lost its grand music hall, but the site remains part of local memory. Today the corner is occupied by a modern building, yet visitors can still picture the theatre’s ornate façade and the crowds that gathered outside. The memory of famous performers who appeared there lingers in the neighbourhood’s stories. The site marks a place where popular entertainment once thrived before television changed how Londoners enjoyed shows. Hammersmith Road carries on past the spot, unchanged except for the absence of the old theatre.