Theatre and Music Hall

Sunderland's First Theatre and Music Hall

This booklet is a first attempt to draw together information on a neglected part of Sunderland's history. The story of how people amused themselves involves every aspect of life. It is about the changing shape of the town, the economy, the refinement of taste, the improvement in living standards.

Sunderland's symbol of entertainment in the past is the Empire. our monument to music hall and variety. Its history has been well charted by Alistair Robinson, with plenty of 20th century written sources. It is different for the 18th and 19th centuries when the sources are partial and sometimes lacking altogether. For some venues there is only one bill or mention in a paper. We know of 15 major venues where commercial theatrical entertainment was provided before the Empire was built and no doubt there were others. Every one has gone.

This article centres on the most important of these, Sunderland's first theatre and its premier music hall which lasted for 116 years from 1768.

Searching the 19th century sources is fascinating but frustrating and sometimes tedious work. My thanks go to members of my local history groups over the years, many of them also members of the Antiquarian Society, who ploughed through almost unreadable columns of tiny type on scratchy microfilms and provided many of the references. I am grateful, too, to students in the l970s who worked in the old National Museum of Music Hall on the Robert Wood collection, some of which seems now to have vanished. Thanks, too, are due to the staff at Sunderland Local Studies Dept and Sunderland Museum.

G. Patterson
January 2009