For more information on accessibility
click here
Hall for Cornwall | Theatre & Arts in Cornwall
item(s)
Discount:
Total:
City Hall is a grade II listed building that was completed in 1846. Built to house the headquarters of the local council, the north end of the complex accommodated the municipal buildings, which included a courtroom and a council chamber, while the south end accommodated a market hall. The clocktower was installed on the Boscawen Street frontage in 1858 and in 1877, when Truro became a city, the complex was renamed Truro City Hall.
This advertisement in the programme for the 1936 T.A.O.D.S production of The Gondoliers promotes three different Truro businesses including a music stockist, a fruiterer and confectioner and a ‘coiffeuse’ which is a women’s hairdressers. These advertisements document the changes that have occured in shopping trends, advertising and ways of life since 1936.
This advertisement in the programme for the 1933 T.A.O.D.S production of The Count of Como promotes four different Truro businesses including two confectioners, a house decorators and an opticians. These advertisements document the changes that have occured in shopping trends, advertising and ways of life since 1933.
This advertisement in the programme for the 1937 T.A.O.D.S production of Jolly Roger promotes three different Truro businesses, including a teacher of pianoforte, organ and theory, a men’s hairdressers and a building and contractors. These advertisements document the changes that have occured in shopping trends, advertising and ways of life since 1937.
An advertisement for Furniss and Co Ltd within the programme for The Rebel Maid production at the County Theatre Truro. Founded in Truro in 1886, Furniss biscuit boxes soon became a standard feature in shops across Cornwall. Adorned with the royal coat of arms, the advertisement reads ‘original makers of the celebrated Cornish ginger bread.’
The advertisement promotes Percy’s Rennet as ‘the best rennet obatainable’ to make an irresistable Junket with. Rennet is the enzyme obtained from a calf’s stomach which is used in the cheesemaking process to coagulate milk and is the magic ingredient in Junket puddings. Although a dish savoured only for the well to do in medieval times, Junket had become a relatively cheap and accessible family staple by the 1920s.
An advertisement for Criddle and Smith Ltd within the programme for The Rebel Maid production at the County Theatre Truro. Situated within the new arcade on Nicholas Street, the advertisement for ‘The Furnishers of Cornwall’ desrcibes it as ‘the home of quality furniture’ and exhibits a photograph of the shop as it existed in 1929.
Before it was a theatre, Carride Council were responsible for the building and we remember that disused rooms upstairs had been taken over by flocks of pigeons! It must have been a dirty job cleaning it up!
When the war ended I was working along River Street. The fire station rang its signal and I threw myself to the ground and I remember thinking how silly I was to have done that. I remember the war well, the incendiary bombs falling all around. My mother rarely let us leave the house, at that time though I remember we went to the Regent Cinema, where they had open grate fires and they ironed the snooker tables before people played on them, and when we were allowed out, we’d head down to find winkles at Newham, boil them and pick them out with a pin.. This one time I remember my mother took us up to the park up at Hendra and we heard a noise and Mum said ‘It’s the Gerries’, so we ran into the public toilets and I remember all the windows smashing, the noise and the chaos of it. Mr Dexter, who was in the AA – you always saluted when you saw him coming – came and collected us and I remember we went up past Fairmantle Street where there was a house of one of my mother’s friends where a bomb had come right down through her sitting room. Sobering it was and I was glad when it was over.
My husband used to click his heels together when he asked you to dance. He wore spare collars and his shoes always shone and he was handsome as the day was long. I first met him at the Red Lion Hotel at the bottom of Lemon Street. If you had money you’d drink out front, and if you were one of the common people you’d drink out the back, sitting on the barrels – that’s where we’d go. A lot of people didn’t have money in those days, but we had comradeship and we enjoyed that. Everybody was in the same boat. He didn’t know anyone at that time, being German, and he went to the Red Lion to meet people, and though I’d seen him there a couple of times I didn’t know him at all. He asked me if I’d like to go to the City Hall for a dance. I was about eighteen or nineteen, but I told him I’d have to ask my mum. Anyway, I went to a dance with him and it went on from there. He’d gone into the German army at eighteen and he was two years interred on Guernsey before they moved him over to Cornwall. He came over on the boat and he lived in these Nissen Huts up by the hospital and from there they were put out to work on farms. They were taken out in lorries to the different farms and he was taken out to a farm at Comprignay Hill. After the war, he stayed on and moved into a tied cottage behind the big house. There were lions on the gateposts and it was a grand place but when I saw his rooms I thought it was terrible, up these rickety steps and he was living above where the stables used to be. All up one end was his bed and there wasn’t much else there aside from that. When we decided to marry, we had to write to Germany just so they could be sure he had never been married before. We had four sons. There’s not a thing I regret about it. We didn’t have much but we enjoyed what we had, and whenever he asked me to dance with him, he’d click his heels together and it took me right back to when I met first him and that first dance.