Splashed across the headlines of The Courier in July 1965 was the news of the Royal South Street Society making a major purchase.
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“South Street gains a home of its own” read the editorial of Monday July 5, 1965.
“It is the dream of every organisation to have its own home and many is the society and club which have worked and scraped to secure one.”
Working and scraping wasn’t really what happened with South Street’s acquisition of the historic Her Majesty’s Theatre, although there were protracted negotiations.
Rather a cautious campaign of talking to the Bolte state government and local benefactors and careful positioning saw the Society get itself out of the new Civic Hall – a building the RSSS loathed – and purchase one of Ballarat’s grand buildings.
HER MAJESTY’S: Rise, fall and rise again.
By the time Royal South Street made moves towards purchasing Her Majesty’s, the grand dame of Ballarat theatre had fallen on hard times.
Since 1910 the theatre had operated as a cinema as well as a musical venue, and as touring musical companies declined in popularity, the role of film became the principal reason for its existence. While theatrical performances were still on the bill, the opening of The Regent picture house in Lydiard Street in 1924 and the ready amount of money to be made from movies sealed the fate of live performance.
The simultaneous arrival of sound in film and the Great Depression saw the industry boom, and Her Majesty’s was at the centre of Ballarat’s movie world. Hoyts had taken control of the theatre, spent huge amounts refurbishing and modernising it. Now in 1936, they leased their pride and joy to Ballarat Amusements P/L and arranged a lease with the South Street Society to renovate their massive Grenville Street property, The Coliseum.
Disaster was imminent. Film stock of the period was notoriously unstable, and would explode into a fire that was virtually inextinguishable once alight. Hoyts had stockpiled film inside the timber building, and on March 24 flames were seen. Within minutes the building was hopelessly ablaze. Forty minutes later South Street’s home since 1908 was gone.
The meagre insurance covered the losses, but the RSSS was left with a thousand pounds debt and homeless. It was forced to move into the historic – but damp – Alfred Hall. The hall spanned the Yarrowee River and the sound of water could be heard flowing under it during performances.
In the meantime Ballarat Amusements was raking in the profits of a successful movie house. The Second World War brought servicemen and women to Ballarat, and they loved the flicks. A fire at The Regent in 1943 gutted the building and closed it for nine months; Ballarat Theatres opened a cinema (the Plaza) in the ANA Hall in Camp Street.
CIVIC HALL: Ballarat’s community demands a response
Attempts had been made to set fire to the Alfred Hall several times, and the community responses to the putative arson were not all condemnatory.
It was the general opinion that the hall had come to the end of its useful life, and a new ‘Civic Centre’ was required. After years of debate, the Haymarket site was acquired from the Crown and Civic Hall was constructed in 1956. The South Street Society (soon to become ‘Royal’ by the Queen’s assent) was offered tenancy and for the next eight years many of the competitions were held in Mair Street.
It was not an entirely happy arrangement. While it was a new and impressive-looking building, there were problems with the acoustics which could not be overcome.
Contestants complained that the ‘clicking of knitting needles’, presumably from competition attendees, could be heard clearly on stage, while their own performances could not. The sound projection in the Main Hall was poor, and the building was notoriously under-heated. Its sightlines to the stage were also flawed, so not all the audience could see what was being performed.
The RSSS was not happy with the new civic jewel in Ballarat’s crown, and planned to make other, happier arrangements.
ROYAL SOUTH STREET: a new home
The committee of the RSSS knew that Her Majesty’s days as a picture house were fading. BTV6 television had commenced in 1962 and attendances at the movies were falling; the building needed extensive repairs and renovations. After extensive negotiations the agreed price struck with Hoyts was £32,000 ($64,000).
Premier Henry Bolte had offered a a two-for-one funding deal up to £20,000; local businessman and former RSSS performer Alfred Reid (of Reid’s Coffee Palace) tipped in another £10,000. Reid was the last member of a family forced by their rules of inheritance to stay in the business founded by their father in the 1850s.
The deal saved Her Majesty’s from likely demolition. Ballarat in the 1960s was a developer’s paradise. Great swathes of Sturt Street were being razed; council hated anything it deemed ‘old or unfashionable’. It had even proposed demolishing its own Town Hall and the Post Office to build a mega-council precinct, and tearing the Sturt Street Gardens out to put in an underground carpark.
RSSS appealed for funds immediately to renovate and update the theatre. In a crafty piece of tax minimisation, the Patriotic Funds Act allowed for donations to be tax-free if they were made to a war memorial.
Her Majesty’s almost overnight became The Memorial Theatre. The renovation fund was a success; the renovations less so.
Changes made to the interior weren’t sympathetic to history, but rather to prosaic needs of the RSSS competitions. The Courier was scathing:
“The Society, ignoring offers of the assistance of acknowledged experts in this specialised field, plodded on with parochial contempt for expert advice which is the hallmark of bad amateurism...”
Also lost was the entire history of Her Majesty’s sets which had been stored under the stage. They were thrown away where the area was converted to dressing rooms. A concrete tunnel was constructed to allow access to the stage, and many other modernisations were rushed through.
SUCCESS AND SADNESS: costs and attrition take their toll
From the 1960s through the 1970s national and international acts joined the RSSS on the historic stage of the theatre. It saw the gradual demise of Civic Hall as a venue, with the musical theatre groups of the city abandoning it as unsuitable and ‘lacking in atmosphere’.
At the same time, wear and tear was taking its toll on the ageing fabric of Her Majesty’s. The Society decided to renovate and modernise yet again – but this time the Victorian Historic Buildings Council stepped in and registered Her Majesty’s as a protected building. At the same time a report questioned the fire and safety compliance of the theatre.
The planned renovations were again criticised, and arts minister Race Mathews was determined the building would undergo restoration sympathetically.
The state government forced the Society’s hand. They offered four-for-one funding for restoration – if the RSSS handed ownership of the theatre to the Ballarat City Council. Initially resisted by the Society, it was soon apparent they would be removed from their own home if they didn’t comply.
On October 5, 1986, the Royal South Street Society acquiesced and agreed to a deed of gift of Her Majesty’s to the City Council. The building passed into the resident’s hands, and funds were released for its restoration.
Now in 2018, Her Majesty’s faces another struggle as engineering reports warn of a damaged and compromised building, and a $20 million bill for repairs.
And Civic Hall? It’s still standing.
My thanks to Royal South Street for their help with this story. It draws on the work on Peter Freund and Val Sarah’s Her Maj – A history of Her Majesty’s Theatre Ballarat, and Royal South Street – The First One Hundred Years
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