Theatre Royal, Marylebone

Built at a cost of about £9,000 by Messrs Ward, Eggerton, and Abbott, the theatre's foundation stone was laid on 17 May 1831 but by the following year it was refused a performing licence as being 'unfinished'.

In its early years the theatre was a cheap venue or "penny gaffe" for the working classes[1] which put on crude melodramas while in 1835 it was raided by the police and was under threat of closure by the local magistrates.

Charles Zachary Barnett's early Dickens adaptation, the three-act burletta Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress, opened at the theatre on 21 May 1838.

Later performances included Shakespeare's Richard III and The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens, who at the time was living nearby in Tavistock House in Devonshire Terrace.

[5] In 1854, during her father William Robertson's joint-management of the theatre, the 6 year-old Madge Kendal made her stage debut as Marie in the drama The Struggle for Gold and the Orphan of the Frozen Sea by Edward Stirling which had a scene of a Danish vessel breaking up on sea ice.

[8][9] In 1857 the actor Samuel Anderson Emery was briefly the manager, being succeeded in 1858 by Joseph Arnold Cave, who had performed there as a boy; while he remained for some years he was no more successful than his predecessors.

Among the ladies Miss Kate James, soubrette; Miss Nellie Navette, danseuse; Miss Ethel Buchanan and Miss Clara Bell, ballad singers, were particular favourites, and the volunteers for the stage on Saturday night also included Arthur Thomas, Sisters Palmer, Jessie Wild, Medley, Jesmond Dene, Charles Vincent, the Tortajados troupe, Jessie Prince, Dora Fielding, Harry Walton, Rosie Sylvester, Sisters Idris, Norris and Delmont, Daisy De Roy, Arthur Stevens, Mark Antony, Aubyn and Allen, Daisy May, Mr Melville, and Jessie Wynn.

[4] A parade of shops with flats above stands on the site today with a plaque marking the former connection with the theatre.