VICTORIAN Keighley gained a theatre through the efforts of one man, Abraham Kershaw, a piano-tuner from Milnsbridge near Huddersfield, who ran a music shop and Kershaw’s Varieties in the Britannia Hall before opening his wooden five-storey Queen’s Theatre and Opera House in 1880.
Although by 1900 he had moved to Morecambe – where as a “Morecambised Yorkshireman” he built Assembly Rooms which he ran as an “entertaining hall” – he was invited to be a partner in the building of this “exceedingly handsome play-house” on the site of his old one. Its architect was the great Frank Matcham.
“Healthy recreations and amusements for the people are just as essential as light and air”, was Abraham Kershaw’s philosophy, “and a well-conducted theatre provides one of the most rational amusements we possess”.
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