DEMOLISHED in 1984, its site now a corner of Morrisons' car park, the Britannia Hall in Market Street was one of Keighley’s most impressive Victorian buildings. Memories of its declining years have tended to obscure its varied historical significance.
Opened by the New Britannia Lodge of Oddfellows in 1853, it was soon being utilised by members of a Keighley Thespian Society, who performed mainly melodramas there but who also tackled Hamlet.
In the 1870s it became a homely music hall run by Abraham Kershaw, a piano tuner from Milnsbridge, near Huddersfield, who would go on to found Keighley’s original five-storey wooden Queen’s Theatre and Opera House in 1880.
Kershaw’s Varieties at the Britannia Hall featured such turns as Alexander Day, billed as the Only One-armed Solo Cornet Player in the Profession, and Blitz, the Wondrous Plate Expert and Manipulator and Spiral Plate and Pyramid Ascentionist! Dan Leno is thought to have performed there early in his career.
Subsequently the Britannia Hall served as a Salvation Army citadel, held dances before and during the Second World War, and housed a fruit and potato warehouse, a bookmaker and a social and snooker club.
The photograph has been supplied by Mr Kevin Seaton, of Shann Lane, Keighley.
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