(Martin, looking back a few pages this thread was re-purposed to embrace a wider theme on the idea of My Lost City, but please feel free to move my post to the Green Room if its inappropriate here).
Had a lost city experience recently in my old hometown of Glasgow when history came into my day in various ways, beginning at the Briggait - a former merchant city fishmarket renovated into a new creative space - I recognized a woman on a stairway taking photographs – she’s someone I know only as an infrequent visitor to my Edinburgh workplace, and meeting like we'd done was unlikely, yet here we both were, at a different city, and in a building unfamiliar to either of us. We chatted briefly, and then parted, but later it seemed like I was fated to keep bumping into her as our paths crossed again when we each left the building, yet another coincidence with this person - curiously I’ve always sensed a connection between us whenever we’ve met, perhaps in a parallel universe an alternative history might have been written - but suffice to say, we’ve remained as strangers. She was heading off to find an obscure theatre I’d never heard of - it was advertised as part of a ‘Door’s Open Day’ event - I was going in a random direction across town, so on a whim I took a detour with her, and what started out as a chance meeting led unexpectedly to an extraordinary place and to the profound effects of a history new to me.
We were standing on a main road near to Glasgow’s Trongate at a busy spot I’ve walked past as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult now looking for a theatre where I knew there was none, never had been, and then we saw a man dressed in Victorian costume - a volunteer guide stood at the side of a fairly ordinary building - he directed us to an alleyway entrance. Amongst a group of people we climbed wide uninspiring stairs to the first floor and pushed through into a dark paneled interior. Harsh daylight at the front elevation windows and glaring halogen lights from above lit the scene, there were tables selling goods, and people sat on chairs watching an old silent movie on a makeshift screen. A woman’s illuminated face poked out from a box, and a fake spiders web had been arranged around her head, as I shuffled past she suddenly opened her eyes and hissed at me. I moved to the centre of the area, sensing an open space above me I looked up and saw a floor with a gallery, beyond it an amazing period ceiling was high over my head - in a moment of fantastic discovery my sight filled with the heaviness and fragility of age - I mentally grabbed at the darkened wood and colourless paint and plasterwork, trying to comprehend where I was.
Maybe at this point my mouth was hanging open or something, surprisingly my heart was pounding, I felt really emotional. I hadn’t expected this, actually, I’d expected nothing, I’d just come along for the trip - and I’d even lost track of my companion – but it felt so right being in here, it was a happy feeling. A man approached me, and said: “Are you interested in the place sir?” Boy, was that an understatement, I could only reply that I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that this was here. I’d walked past outside while growing up in this city - and a giant ghost was living up here all the while. The man who spoke was involved with a preservation group, and he proceeded to tell me the amazing story of the Britannia Panopticon - the world’s oldest surviving music hall. The building started its life in the East-End as a warehouse, but after the tobacco merchants moved with their wealth to the West of town the area fell into an ugly decline, so amidst the numerous shebeens and brothels a new purpose was found in 1857 when it was converted into a rough and ready venue. It was an immediate success with the local working classes, and could barely contain the sheer volume of people who relentlessly patronized it and valued its respite from the extreme hardships and severe impoverishment of their lives.
In 1896 it was vastly upgraded inside, and the new cinematograph became a permanent feature, but the story becomes particularly colourful in 1906 when an astute and eccentric Yorkshireman A E Pickering bought the Britannia - he loved to play practical jokes and pranks, and became one of the city’s most recognizable and wealthiest businessmen - modeling himself on the great American showman P T Barnum, he created his concept of the Panopticon - a multi-level-entertainment-extravaganza - and all for the price of just one ticket. On the top floor above the music hall and cinema he installed a carnival, with aunt sallies, fortune-tellers, amusement arcade’s, and ‘Freaks’ such as Leonine the Lion-Headed girl, and Tom Thumb lived up here (they were part of another exhibition that Pickering also owned). He excavated the basement and created his 'Noahs Ark', a dubious flea infested ‘zoo’ with caged monkeys, birds, reptiles, and a bear - which eventually escaped its cruel prison onto the busy high street where it was shot and killed.
After the 30’s depression the building was sold to new owners in 1938. It was dramatically turned into a clothes factory – with the carnival and animals gone, the stage and the seating on the first floor was ripped out, and the second floor gallery and the ceiling above was sealed off and permanently closed from sight by a false roof. The remains of the great and famous Panoption then remained hidden away untouched for nearly 60 years until a researcher identified the location in 1997 and obliged the buildings present owners to acknowledge and reveal publicly their secret treasure - (speculation being that they knew damn fine the historical significance of the interior but did not want the bother or responsibility if it were to become a grade A-listed property – as it now in fact is).
By this point my head was buzzing from hearing the evolution of the theatre and the Federico Fellini-esque tale of the dapper showman entrepreneur with his cast of showgirls, clowns, freaks and the artillery being called to hunt a scared rampaging animal amidst the trams and horse-less carriages. But the real thing I left with was a strong link with the place, call it a bond, or as our John sings in Ghosts On Water:
"city has a memory",
“fused in the bone”. My father’s from the East-End, as were his parents, so I’ve a few generations going back who lived in that desperate part of the city, it has to be likely that some of them came to this music hall and briefly escaped into its world of entertainment, sitting in that raucous crowded audience - at where I now stood, in a place that had been secreted for over half a century and could have so easily been wiped away into history – but, its still here, its more than a memory, it’s a reality, and it made me happy to touch the past from the perspective of the present, and to feel a continuation, what a day it had been, simply amazing.
http://www.scottishcinemas.org.uk/glasgow/panop.htmlhttp://www.scottishcinemas.org.uk/glasgow/panopticon_new/index.html
