Pop stars, Sooty and a £42m revamp – Croydon's Fairfield Halls is back for the future

Fairfield Halls opened in 1962 and hosted acts from virtuoso pianist Artur Rubinstein to Sooty, before being closed for a multimillion-pound refurbishment in 2016. Now restored to its former glory, Nick Smurthwaite charts the venue’s history and discovers plans to deliver a programme that reflects the borough’s rich diversity

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Fairfield Halls in Croydon has reopened after nearly three years of refurbishment costing £42 million, some 57 years after the modernist arts complex – inspired by the Festival of Britain and the Royal Festival Hall – was first opened with great pomp and ceremony by the Queen Mother.

The first of three buildings to open was the concert hall, with seating for 1,794, and on the first night of November 2, 1962, Malcolm Sargent, darling of the Proms, conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a programme that included the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin playing Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor.

Three days later, the Ashcroft Theatre (now Ashcroft Playhouse), seating 763 and named after Croydon-born Peggy Ashcroft, opened in a rather more modest fashion in the presence of the great actor herself, introduced by Andrew Cruickshank, who read a specially written prologue by the poet John Betjeman entitled Local Girl Makes Good.

Artistically, the Ashcroft did not get off to a great start, premiering the play Royal Gambit, starring a woefully miscast Michael Denison as Henry VIII, and his wife Dulcie Gray as Katherine of Aragon. It was slaughtered by the critics. The next production starred Cruickshank in Ibsen’s The Master Builder, and was better received.

Fairfield Halls was designed to replace an outdated civic hall, as well as a number of pre-war theatres and music halls that had fallen into disrepair. There was some opposition from residents to centralising the performing and visual arts at a cost of £1.25 million under one roof, rather than providing a number of smaller arts centres throughout the borough.

The site of Fair Field was traditionally reserved for the annual Croydon Fair. Dating back to medieval times, and originally thought for trading livestock, it evolved into more of a recreational event, with acrobats, clowns, musicians and other amusements attracting large crowds, so it was fitting that it should continue to provide entertainment and enlightenment to the people of Croydon.

‘Fairfield holds a special place in people’s hearts’

The town council’s intention, on purchasing the land in 1934, was always to offer as much cultural variety as possible in the three spaces of the Ashcroft Theatre, the concert hall and the Arnhem Gallery, named after Croydon’s twin town in the Netherlands. One night, there would be a recital by piano virtuoso Artur Rubinstein; the next, all-in wrestling.

The Beatles played the concert hall twice in 1963, and other world-class performers to appear there included Jacqueline du Pré, Ella Fitzgerald, Elton John, David Bowie, Dave Brubeck, Chuck Berry, Mantovani, BB King and Don McLean.

In the year of its opening, the concert hall also played host to The Big Pop Show, featuring Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, Bee Bumble and the Stingers, known for their hit single Nut Rocker, and the guitarist who inspired the Shadows, Bert Weedon.

Orchestral concerts were frequently recorded by the BBC, and the London Mozart Players – Croydon’s resident orchestra for the past 30 years – marked its 70th anniversary with a gala concert on September 18, which included a new work by the 2012 BBC Young Composer of the Year, Alex Woolf.

Next door in the Ashcroft, the fare was equally diverse, from Sooty to Amadeus, Bram Stoker to The Rocky Horror Show. Just before he became a household name in Only Fools and Horses in the early 1980s, David Jason appeared in the restoration comedy The Relapse in 1978, as Lord Foppington, wearing an outlandish wig that all but obscured his face.

Neil Chandler, artistic director of Fairfield Halls, now managed by the Bournemouth-based company BH Live, says he wants the Ashcroft to get back to its original purpose of focusing on plays rather than tribute acts and musical tours, although those will continue to be part of the mix.

Future programming will also be a lot more diverse, says Chandler, to reflect Croydon’s 54% black and Asian population. The theatre companies Talawa and Savvy will have residencies in Croydon, as will the black and minority ethnic youth orchestra, Chineke!.

Sadly, one of the Ashcroft’s hidden treasures – the safety curtain designed and painted by the late Northampton-based scenic artist Henry Bird in 1982 – had to be destroyed as part of the refurbishment because it contained asbestos. This extraordinary and witty work of art referenced, among other things, the days of travelling players, famous Croydonians with theatrical associations including the actor Martin Jarvis, composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the tragedian Edmund Kean, as well as an assortment of old English customs. Images are posted on the Fairfield’s website.

Another striking artwork – a mosaic depicting Ashcroft in her youth – was unveiled this week by Judi Dench and Ashcroft’s biographer, the critic Michael Billington.

Chandler is optimistic for the future: “Fairfield holds a special place in people’s hearts. The guiding compass for the refurbishment has been that each space was designed in 1962 for a reason. There isn’t another concert hall of this calibre serving the Surrey-Kent borders, so let’s not fill it with tribute acts, let’s keep it for what it should be – a world-class concert hall for leading orchestras, musicians and comedians.”

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Editor’s View: Talawa’s new home at Fairfield Halls has been a long time coming