LAST year an application was made to turn a supermarket site in Angel Street, Worcester into a new Hogarth’s Gin Palace pub. It got the heave-ho from the local planning authorities and received criticism along the lines that it would only add to Worcester’s “drinking culture”.

There was some irony here, because the site in question was where Worcester’s Theatre Royal used to stand and if you want to draw a historical connection, a “gin palace” would have more in common with a theatre than a food retailer. And certainly more than a car showroom, which used to be there before the Co-op moved in.

An entertainment venue had been at this particular address since 1780 when the original Theatre Royal was built.

This lasted 95 years before a complete re-vamp in 1875 turned it into a typical Victorian auditorium with velvet tip-up seats, private boxes and even a flight of marble steps to the dress circle. There was another refurbishment in 1903 and then a major reconstruction after a devastating fire in 1912.

Through it all the theatre remained Worcester’s principal place of entertainment, but its popularity declined after the Second World War with the rise of cinema and television. In its hey-day all the famous variety performers and actors appeared at the Theatre Royal, as did the annual pantomime and occasional touring opera companies.

But as audiences declined, the venue went downmarket in an effort to keep the punters coming in. Productions titled We’ve Got Nothing On Tonight, Sea Scanties, Too Hot For Paris and The Jane Show (named after the Daily Mirror’s popular pin-up character) were hardly for Aunt Maud or the kids.

As a teenage reporter, Mike Grundy, Worcester’s legendary journalist, had the job of covering (no pun intended) some of these shows in the 1950s and was distinctly unimpressed. He wrote: “The highlight of these so called ‘daring extravaganzas’ was when the heavy velvet curtains went up to reveal what to me seemed rows of geriatric women. They were topless behind a partition up to their waists and in statuesque poses, not allowed by law to move a muscle – or anything else. I found these shows devastatingly boring.”

Some family favourites did continue and I just about remember when a very young lad being taken to a performance by the Billy Cotton Band Show (a Sunday radio legend at the time), which ended with the performers throwing cotton wool snowballs at the audience.

But audiences in general were in decline and the curtain finally came down for the last time on Saturday, May 28, 1955. Even in the Theatre Royal’s last week its much respected resident rep company the Frank Fortescue Players put on two “adults only” plays, Forbidden Fruit and Should A Wife Tell. At the end, the audience linked hands and sang Auld Lang Syne.

Today such a vintage building would be retained and reused, but back then things were different. The old theatre was demolished and a car showroom built on the site. Then the premises became a discount food market and later a supermarket.

Now it will not become a “super pub”, although somehow I think the ghosts of the Billy Cotton Band Show might have approved of that plan.