OCTOBER marks seventy years since the magnificent Hippodrome Theatre in Keighley closed its doors for good.
The very last show was a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma!, staged by Keighley Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society.
The story of the theatre stretches back to the reign of Queen Victoria, when a wooden American-style theatre was built on Queen Street in Keighley.
By 1890, this had been replaced by a stone building but at the start of the 20th century this was replaced again by an even more impressive edifice.
This new theatre opened in February 1900. It had been designed by renowned theatre architect Frank Matcham.
It covered 7,000 square feet, with a frontage of 86 feet to Queen Street and 48 feet to Adelaide Street.
There was an iron veranda fitted with coloured glass that ran the whole length of the front.
The venue could seat almost 2,000 people, the stage was 65 feet wide by 45 feet deep, and it boasted that every person in the house had an uninterrupted view of the whole stage. There were six private boxes, bars on all five floors, and ten dressing rooms.
The ornate interior of the venue.
All three theatres were known as the Queen’s Theatre, but in 1909 it changed its name to the Hippodrome (although it was often referred to as the Hippodrome and Queen’s Theatre - mainly because the original name was carved in stone across the front!).
The rise in the popularity of television posed a real threat to many provincial theatres in the early 1950s.
The Hippodrome tried various approaches to winning back the evening audience. These included the ever popular pantomimes, ‘stunt’ shows such as Syncopating Sandy who played the piano non-stop for 133 hours and The Great Levante - whose magic show included firing a lady from a cannon through a steel plate - and shows that gave viewers rather risque performances of the type they couldn’t see on TV. But all to no avail.
Syncopating Sandy's marathon piano playing at the Hippodrome in 1956. (Image: Keighley and District Local History Society)
The Hippodrome was actually put up for auction before the Amateurs had even staged ‘Oklahoma!’.
Frederic Pye and Olive Kitchen in The Dancing Years 1953.
The editorial in the Keighley News of November 3, 1963 had this to say about the curtain coming down one last time: “Closure of the Keighley Hippodrome has come as a shock to many Keighley people, but the regrets appear to be too late, for insufficient patrons and people interested failed to attend when the theatre was open to make it a paying concern.
Keighley Hippodrome being demolished in 1961.
The correspondence received by The Keighley News shows the feeling which has been aroused but does not stress the importance of people attending when the theatre was open.”
Although the theatre was reported as having been bought by a Leeds businessman for redevelopment as shops, offices and possibly even a dance hall, very little was made of it before it was demolished in 1961 as part of the town centre redevelopment.
Where the theatre once stood, now stands the shopping centre’s multi-storey car park.
Ernest Marsden in The Duchess of Dantzic in 1928.
An amateur operatic society was formed in Keighley in 1905, and it performed its first show, The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan, at the Queen’s Theatre later that same year.
But there was a falling out and the original amateurs society split in two. The two separate societies came together again in 1913 and formed the Keighley Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society. Their first show was Haddon Hall which they staged at the Hippodrome in 1914.
This was the start of annual musicals staged by the Keighley Amateurs at the Hippodrome, interrupted only by two World Wars, right up until the theatre closed in 1956.
And this didn’t stop the society, because they continued their musical shows, firstly at the Ritz Cinema and then at Victoria Hall. The society continues today, under its new name of Keighley Musical Theatre Company.
l Tim Neal, of Keighley and District Local History Society, will be telling the intertwined story of the Hippodrome Theatre and Keighley Amateurs at the Civic Centre on Wednesday, October 14.
The meeting will be held upstairs in the main hall of Keighley Civic Centre on North Street, Keighley.
Doors open at 7.15pm, and the meeting starts at around 7.20pm, finishing around 8.30pm. Entry costs £3.50 (free for members). History Society members also have the option of joining the meeting via Zoom.
Anyone interested in joining the History Society can do so at this meeting. Membership for the year costs £15 per person or £20 for a couple. As well as free access to all the monthly meetings, membership also includes the society’s quarterly newsletter plus the chance to attend members-only events. Anyone who joins at this meeting will get membership for the rest of 2026 and for all of 2027.
Tim will also be giving a talk Wednesday, October 21 at Keighley Local Studies Library (upstairs in the main library) on North Street, Keighley, at 2.30pm.