The Assembly Rooms

Built in the eighteenth century, with the oldest surviving reference being a newspaper advert from 1741, the Assembly Rooms Theatre originally functioned as a ballroom, before being chosen to be redeveloped as a theatre after Durham's Theatre Royal burnt down in a fire in 1869. Its first dramatic performance, Il Trovatore, was presented in 1891. It was also used as a cinema, with the first projection being made in December 1896 only a month after the first film shown in Durham (at the Court Lane Theatre). After their first production of H.M.S. Pinafore in 1909, the theatre continued to be used extensively by Durham Amateur Operatic Group in the early twentieth century, until its acquisition…