Hulme Hippodrome
The Hulme Hippodrome in Manchester, England, is a Grade II listed building, a proscenium arch theatre with two galleries and a side hall. It was originally known as the Grand Junction Theatre and Floral Hall, and opened on 7 October 1901 on the former main road of Preston Street, Hulme. It was also used for repertory theatre in 1940s, and for recording BBC programmes with audiences between 1950 and 1956. The theatre has been closed since 2018 and a campaign group exists to bring it back into use as a community resource. The stage doors are on Warwick Street. Its local name in memoirs and records is 'The Hipp'. Its national heritage significance includes being the venue for recording live the first three series of broadcast programmes by Morecambe and Wise.
This article is about the theatre called the Hulme Hippodrome from 1906 onwards. For the earlier Hulme Hippodrome, see Playhouse Theatre, Manchester.Address
1950s – BBC recordings at the Hipp (1950–1961)[edit]
1950s – BBC general[edit]
The earliest known radio outside broadcasts from Hulme Hippodrome are from February 1950: starting with a long-running series Variety Fanfare; plus The Norman Evans Show later in the year; and a 30-minute excerpt of a performance of the Hipp's seasonal Cinderella pantomime, transmitted on 5 January 1951 starring Frank Randle and Josef Locke.[44]
From the BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham, a file of correspondence exists on venue hire details for recordings at Hulme Hippodrome, with around 24 titles of different programmes recorded between February 1950 and January 1961, mostly radio with some TV towards the end. These archive papers are not exhaustive, and relate to venue hire details with just the programme titles being included in venue booking letters rather than the details of the creative content of each programme.[44] The BBC hired the Hulme Hippodrome auditorium on Sunday evenings when there were no public performances, to make radio (audio) recordings of variety acts for radio programmes (and possibly later for TV) such as the regional then national programme radio series, Variety Fanfare.[57][58]
In the 1950s there were three BBC radio networks or 'services' - Home, Light, and Third. The Light Service and the Third Programme were national services, and the Home Service was also national but with six regional opt-outs, one being NEHS - the North of England Home Service. Some of the recordings made at the Hulme Hippodrome were for the NEHS regional opt-out slots in the Home Service, and some were made for the Light Service which was national.
From a book on the history of the BBC's Variety Department, in the post-war years there was a need to find good recording venues:
1950s – variety and revue shows, rock and roll gigs[edit]
Strictly Northern[edit]
"So it was after 1950 when I first attended [the Hipp] and I was entranced. This was like no other theatre I had ever visited before, strictly northern in its approach rather than cosmopolitan and offering different shows and [artistes] that I had ever seen before. I wasn't to know at the time that I was about to witness the last glorious kick of the post war variety boom before the theatre closed its doors to live stage entertainment forever."[3]
1950s – variety artists on stage at the Hipp (non-BBC)[edit]
The popular Lancashire comedian Frank Randle (1901-1957) reportedly was responsible for £1,000 a week in box office takings at the Hipp in 1950, but by 1954 he owed the Inland Revenue £54,000.[80]
On 17 September 1953 Shirley Bassey appeared with other singers in the touring show, Memories of Jolson. This was said to be her first professional tour as a singer. She next appeared in May 1954 in Harlem Jazz, where a newspaper review of her performance at Hulme Hippodrome said, "Shirley Bassey sings old and new blues tunes with real zip".[81]
Barry Took made his premiere professional career appearance in August 1951 at the Hulme Hippodrome.[82]
The increasing use of the revue format for a whole 2-hour performance was to save costs. The revue format booked and used all the artists as a single company, with each artist taking on multiple roles across the different slots.[19] As Randle S. Cutts noted in his memoir:
2003-2020 – church services and music gigs[edit]
2003-15 – Hipp in use by Gilbert Deya Ministries (religious charity)[edit]
From details in the Land Register the building was then bought from Brooks Wilkinson Ltd on 26 August 2003 for £250,000[13] by the Gilbert Deya Ministries (GDM) a controversial religious charity, being an unincorporated trust founded on 1 September 1995. The year following their purchase of the Hippodrome (3 February 2004) the charity gained planning permission and listed building consent from Manchester City Council for two mobile phone antennas disguised as flagpoles to be added at the top of the Warwick Street side wall.
The GDM charity has been officially investigated[131] at least twice (2004 - 2006, and 2016 - ongoing) and possibly three times[132] by the Charity Commission.
An evangelical church blending Christianity with some African cultures with a reported saying of "My Jesus kills witches",[133] their services were held on the ground floor of the Floral Hall, adjacent to the main auditorium.[134] The religious charity reportedly spent £200,000 on ad-hoc repairs to the Floral Hall portion of the building around 2015.
Following a scandal in the UK with press coverage in 2004[135] there was a contested and therefore delayed extradition of Gilbert Deya in August 2017 from the UK to Nairobi, Kenya to face trial on charges of child stealing, the charges were denied and the verdict on 17 July 2023 in Nairobi was of his acquittal due to insufficient evidence.[136] From court papers, his wife Mary Deya had previously been arrested for "falsification of the [children's] birth certificates ... and pleaded guilty and [she was] sentenced to serve six months' imprisonment".[137] From the same court papers, they reportedly divorced in 2017.[137]
The charity has been associated with a complex cluster[138] of short-life private companies, some with charity trustees as directors. There was a further press scandal in 2016.[139]
Probably by September 2015 Hulme Hippodrome was no longer being used by the charity for services / events, leading up to the extradition of Gilbert Deya to Kenya in August 2017.
The contested sale of the Hipp on 25 November 2020 by some people in GDM, including a minority of trustees, to a south London property developer is detailed below. The details of the trustees of the charity were finally removed from the title deeds by the Land Registry on 31 August 2023.[140]
2004 – Bingo Jesus iconic sign[edit]
When the religious charity bought the building there was an existing Bingo rigid sign fixed high on the early 1970s metal cladding on the east wall facing Warwick Street. Probably in late 2003 or early 2004 based on surviving photographs, the charity fixed a banner at the same height beside that sign with the single word, Jesus. These two signs - Bingo Jesus - remained side by side until the signs were removed some years later (maybe 2007 from land charge details, or 2012[141]), along with the underlying metal cladding, based on photographs.[142] This combined signage became an iconic cultural reference for many people in Hulme, for example forming a permanent wall display in the Lass O'Gowrie pub (M1 7DB) and with a local psychedelic rock band naming themselves after the sign.
2006-07 – Theatres at Risk registers; Theatres Trust, Historic England[edit]
Hulme Hippodrome has been listed in the national Theatres at Risk (TAR) Register since it was first compiled in 2006 by the Theatres Trust, a register which is updated annually.[143] In July 2007 English Heritage (later, Historic England) added Hulme Hippodrome to their list of theatres at risk.[144]
2007-19 – Enforced repairs by the council, cladding and canopy removed[edit]
Around the same time Manchester City Council started to undertake remedial works to the building (using its section 78 powers in the Building Act 1984) which presumably the charity had declined to do, as shown in the Land Charges Register, including: