In that first summer, the plays Hamlet and The Belle's Stratagem were performed at the theatre, and received good reviews.

[3][6] Other performers included Edmund Kean, Joseph Grimaldi and Ira Aldridge, the first black actor to appear in the UK.

[8] In 1843 Edmund Sharpe bought the theatre, and after an extension and alteration, he reopened it in 1849 as a music hall as well as a museum for the local Literary and Natural History Society.

With the interior rebuilt in the same year (the new design by architect Albert Winstanley), it re-opened as The Grand Theatre.

It is owned by the Lancaster Footlights who started performing in the 1920s and bought the Grand Theatre in 1951 to save it from demolition.