A small crowd gathered in Tottenham Lane that evening for the opening of the Queen’s Opera House at 31 Topsfield Parade.
Some people had tickets for the popular comic opera, The Geishawhile others were just bystanders.
The performance started at 8pm, with doors open from 7.30pm.
Seat prices ranged from one shilling in the pit to five shillings in the orchestra stalls – 5p to 25p in decimal currency, equivalent to about £5.50 to £28.50 when adjusted for inflation.
Ticketholders for the pit had to access the theatre through the rear entrance from Middle Lane.
The Geisha ran for five nights, with a matinee on Saturday, July 31.
During the interval on the first night the theatre’s proprietors, Messrs H H Morell and Frederick Mouillot, made brief speeches.
Mr James Edmondson, the developer responsible for Topsfield Parade, took a bow from his seat in one of the boxes.
‘Opera House’ seems a rather grandiose name for the new theatre, perhaps saying more about the social aspirations of the residents than their taste in entertainment.
The Queen’s offered a popular repertoire of operetta, melodrama, and theatrical classics. Ellen Terry starred as Portia in The Merchant of Venice in February 1899, and in June of that year Mrs Patrick Campbell attracted a full house when she appeared in Pinero’s The Second Mrs Tanqueray.
But the higher prices charged at the box office for these celebrity appearances were controversial.
The annual Christmas pantomime, an established feature by the turn of the 20th Century, was billed as safe family entertainment ‘free from all vulgarity.’
Sinbad the Sailor was scheduled to open on Boxing Day 1904, but events took a disastrous turn.
Around 10pm on Saturday, December 24, when the final dress rehearsal had just finished, members of the theatre staff found part of the scenery, stored in the ‘flies’ above the stage, on fire.
The fireproof metal curtain was immediately lowered, emergency procedures were put in place, and the Hornsey Fire Brigade was soon in attendance.
The fire was successfully confined to the stage area, but within that space it spread very rapidly.
By the time it was extinguished, the fireproof curtain had collapsed, and the roof of the stage had fallen in. All the pantomime scenery was destroyed.
On the plus side, musical instruments and other equipment were rescued, no-one was killed, and only minor injuries were suffered.
The Hornsey and Finsbury Park Journal paints a graphic picture of the scene on Boxing Day, when the pantomime should have opened: “Immediately on entering the theatre one stood in the stalls and glanced through the proscenium at the murky December sky.
“Nothing but the walls of the stage were standing, and they were no longer complete; there were several large gaps in the wall at the back of the stage, of which portions had doubtless been dragged down by the falling roof. The bricks lay among the debris below.”
The theatre reopened on Monday, September 25, 1905, with a production of The Gay Parisienne.
The theatre had been completely redecorated, electric lighting had been installed, and the price of the cheapest seats was halved to sixpence.
On Christmas Eve 1906, after another lengthy closure for structural alterations, the theatre was relaunched as the Crouch End Hippodrome, a ‘high-class music-hall’.
The audience on the opening night was smaller than the new manager, Mr De Groot, must have hoped.
He shrugged it off as “nothing to grumble about”, but a full repertoire of live performances proved impossible to sustain.
It was supplemented by silent films from 1910, and in 1928 the Hippodrome was converted into a cinema. This survived until 1942, when another serious fire destroyed the frontage.
When you next walk along Tottenham Lane, look out for Virgin Active Health Club at 31 Topsfield Parade.
Although much has changed, the distinctive semi-circular window at first floor level – a replica of the original – gives some idea of the former theatre’s appearance.
- Brenda Griffith-Williams is a member of the Hornsey Historical Society (hornseyhistorical.org.uk) which welcomes new members.
