Great news! Swansea Council has brought the 132-year-old Palace Theatre back home – the Council acquired the theatre early this year and the theatre is set to get a £5 million redevelopment.
The Palace is a Grade II listed theatre on the High Street, with the definition of a Grade II listed building being ‘one of special interest, warranting every effort to preserve it.’ Occupying a distinctive triangular shape, it was in public use for over 100 years and has two steep balconies which curve round to the stage. It is well documented that Charlie Chaplin has graced the stage here and the venue was the first place in Wales to show a silent picture. Amazingly it survived the Blitz of the Second World War, when much of Swansea City was destroyed during the ‘Three Night Blitz.’
More recently, Welsh legend Anthony Hopkins made his first stage appearance here in 1960 and Morecambe and Wise and Ken Dodd also performed here in the 60’s. The Palace Theatre finally became the Palace Nightclub in the 1970’s. The Palace was a very popular and successful gay nightclub for many years, and following on from this, many more successful club nights were hosted here. With the 2 balconies looking over the dancefloor, it really was a unique venue, and many people hold very special memories of nights spent here.
The Palace finally shut its doors in 2006 and was sold to a property company in London for around 300,000.
It has been in a dangerous state of disrepair ever since, with the vegetation taking over the building little by little. It has been painful to watch and the future looked bleak/ non-existent. As the years rolled by, we continued to watch the weeds grow out of this beautiful building. A victim of urban decay.
In 2015 Swansea Council made £75,000 ‘emergency funds’ available to the owners to carry out work on the theatre. Works included making the building watertight, removing the vegetation and the loose brickwork. Advice was also provided to the owner on applying for a grant from the WG Vibrant and Visible Places programme. Unfortunately the emergency works that were carried out were not enough to stop the ongoing ingress of water. Indeed, one report stated that a million-pound investment ‘would not touch it’. The photo below was originally published in a Wales On Line article from February, found HERE
As concerns for it’s future continued to rise, A ‘Friends of the Palace Theatre’ facebook page was set up for those interested in saving the venue. It now has over 3000 members, and you can find it HERE
Rock bottom was hit in 2018 when the theatre was described as being “at the hub of the city’s street sex trade”, after residents of High Street complained that they were no longer able to walk past the building in safety. The future continued to look bleak for the Palace as failure to maintain the building led to more and more disrepair. Could it really get any worse for our beloved Palace?
The answer is yes, when in September 2019 the fire service were called out to the theatre amid reports of smoke at the building, emitting from the ground and fourth floor windows. Thankfully the fire was put out before the building burnt to the ground.
Finally, following the fire, some great news…… Swansea Council announced its intention to purchase the building and it was brought back into the fold early this year.
A specialist design team, which includes structural, civil, mechanical and electrical engineers, has now been appointed to preserve the building. The plan is to transform the building into offices with space provided for small scale performances and conferences, creative business and small to medium enterprises and start-ups.
The community are being asked to share memories on the Facebook page and businesses are being asked for ideas on how they would run/manage the Palace.
Click HERE for the Facebook page and HERE to go to the Welsh Government page for business ideas and to record an interest.