MtGM: The Cambridge Festival. formerly Barnwell Theatre was built in 1814 by William Wilkins the Elder, a plasterer who ran the Norwich circuit. The Buddhists, I have been pleased to see, have treated it with great respect. The Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal, which became the HQ for that circuit, was built in 1819 by his son, the younger William Wilkins, an architect, who also designed, incidentally the National Gallery. It has been superbly restored by the National Trust.

Jim: I'm not sure I can answer for Scotland, but in England until the 1780s, practically all small country town theatre was in the form of 'fit up', since the legal standing of theatre performance was too dodgy to encourage anyone to build a permanent theatre that might be used, with permanent risk of enforced closure, for only a few weeks in the year, during the annual fairs, race meetings, Christmas, the assizes etc. Some larger towns had a theatre with a Royal warrant (a 'theatre royal'), but the general picture was one of ad hoc provision. A strolling company who, if lucky, might have a local patron among the gentry or military, would sweet-talk the local magistrates into allowing them to give performances in fitted-up barns or tavern club rooms.   In 1788 the licensing powers of the magistrates were clarified by statute and a new sense of certainty led to a rush to build little circuit theatres, which, unsurprisingly tended to be rather barn-like.   Every theatre on a circuit had to be identical in dimensions, since the company travelled with its scenery. They also had a very little time for rehearsals. Rehearsals and performances needed to take place on a stage that felt familiar in every respect. Remains of such theatres are dotted about the country, but there is only one (among former hundreds) that has been fully restored and made operational in its original form and that is in Richmond, Yorkhire.

The performers also had to be extremely versatile, not only to act in 'The Vampire' on Wednesday, a musical version of 'King Lear' on Thursday and 'Black-eyed Susan' on Friday. Nearly all of them also had to be capable singers and some were competent dancers. I like to imagine a comfortable middle-class gent in the box tier, noting a particular song as a good one for his private after-supper harmonic meetings and hoping to find a printed copy, while the illiterate coachman in the gallery is imprinting the whole song on his memory, to be reproduced later, with variations, at a free-and-easy.

The fit-up survived where there were no theatres and in the mid-twentieth century, when most country theatres had disappeared, a few companies were formed to take simple productions to theatreless regions.   I went to irregular pub performances, when they were no longer common, as late as the 1950s in suburban London.