DESIGNED by the famous theatrical architect Frank Matcham, Keighley's "exceedingly handsome" New Queen's Theatre opened in 1900 on the site of a five-storey wooden predecessor.

Part of its first-night takings were donated to a Patriotic Fund in aid of the Boer War then raging.

As additions to the advertised programme, volunteer surgeon-captain Gabriel recited Kipling's The Absent-Minded Beggar, the band played Soldiers of the Queen, and church brigade lads passed tambourines round the "gentry of the district" audience to collect an extra £36.4s.

Renamed the Hippodrome in 1909, the theatre's twice-nightly performances provided popular entertainment for several generations.

In 1920, for example, it put on 30 weeks of variety turns and eleven of revues and musical comedies, while four of its six plays were comedies. Cultural highlights were the annual productions of the Keighley Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society.

Sadly, a victim of changing public habits, the Hippodrome closed in 1956.

This photograph, together with the shot of the interior, are from the subsequent sale brochure supplied by Mrs Christine Smith, of Oakbank Avenue, Keighley.