Fairfield Halls

Fairfield Halls

Fairfield Halls as seen from Queen's Gardens
General information
Type Concert hall
Architectural style Modernist
Address Park Lane, Croydon CR9
Country United Kingdom
Inaugurated 1962
Client County Borough of Croydon
Design and construction
Architect Robert Atkinson and Partners

Fairfield Halls is an arts, entertainment and conference centre located in Croydon, London. It opened in 1962 and contains a concert hall, theatre and gallery. The large concert hall is frequently used for BBC television, radio and orchestral recordings. Fairfield Halls closed for two years for a £30 million redevelopment in July 2016.[1]

Although the venue has been a major venue for professional music, plays, musicals, stand-up comedy and classical music, a significant proportion of Fairfield's programme has also been for community events. It was frequently used by local schools as the venue for their annual choral concerts, as well as being regularly used by local music, opera, amateur dramatic and religious organisations. The Concert Hall features a cinema with Croydon's largest cinema screen.

The halls are built on the site of Croydon's historic 'Fair Field' (which hosted a well-known fair up until around 1860), and above disused railway cuttings which used to link the main London to Brighton railway to Croydon Central Station in what is now Queen's Gardens. Between 1930 and 1962 the land was home to both a car park and air raid shelters during the war.

The venue was 50 years old in 2012 and an anniversary concert by the London Mozart Players was attended by the Earl of Wessex. A website was also launched to celebrate both the venue's history and to act as an ongoing archive (see below). It contains 2000 digitised images accessed via text and keyword searches. This makes it one of the largest digitised venue archives in Europe.

As a venue

The building's concert hall has 1801 seats (counting the choir stalls), the Ashcroft Theatre has 755, and the Arnhem Gallery is used for standing concerts of up to 400.

Many famous acts have performed at the Fairfield Halls, including Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Genesis, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Who, Queen, Morrissey, a-ha, Caravan, Traffic (who recorded a live album in the halls), Family (who recorded the first side of their album Anyway in the halls), the Nice (who recorded their album Five Bridges in the halls), Robert Cray, Status Quo, Chuck Berry, Kenny Rogers, Elkie Brooks, Peter Frampton, Wishbone Ash, Daniel O'Donnell, Shakin' Stevens, the Sinceros, Petula Clark, Hall & Oates, Free, James Last, Bucks Fizz, Judith Durham, McFly, Argent and Coolio. Delaney & Bonnie & Friends recorded their live album On Tour with Eric Clapton in the halls, with a band that also featured Jim Gordon, Carl Radle, Bobby Whitlock, Leon Russell, Dave Mason, and George Harrison. Rat Scabies and Captain Sensible of the Damned both worked as toilet cleaners at Fairfield Halls,[2] Captain Sensible remarking that he was inspired to take music more seriously after witnessing a T.Rex concert there.[3] Morecambe and Wise's appearance at the halls in 1973 was filmed, the only time that their live stage act was recorded.[4]

Fairfield Halls was also used for British professional wrestling for many years, with various cards having been featured on ITV's World of Sport in the 1970s and 1980s. Fairfield has featured as a location in many films, TV productions and commercials.

The future

Fairfield was run from 1993 to 2016 by a self-financing charity with a board of trustees. The charity was in receipt of an operating grant from Croydon Council; it was placed into administration in July 2016.[5]

Croydon Council, the freeholder of the land, has had various plans to refurbish Fairfield over the years but none of these plans has ever come to fruition. It is now anticipated that around £30m will be spent on redeveloping and modernising Fairfield Halls in the period between 2016 and 2018.

In the summer of 2014 the council paid for the refurbishment of the Arnhem Gallery, the conversion of the former 'Green Room' into the New Studio and the installation of the latest digital projection equipment with Dolby Surround 7.1 in the Concert Hall.

In the spring of 2015 a new set of consultants led by Croydon firm Mott MacDonald was appointed by Croydon Council to deliver a £12m programme on the Fairfield Halls and a separate programme for the remainder of the 'College Green' site.

In February 2016, it was confirmed that the venue would close for two years for redevelopment starting July 2016 as part of the Croydon council's plan for the cultural and educational quarter in the town centre, with new homes, offices and shops as well as a building for Croydon College being built.[6][7]

In cinema

Fairfield's concert hall was used as a brief location for Robert Langdon's speech to students in the film The Da Vinci Code. The venue also featured more recently in the films Made in Dagenham and Cuban Fury.

References

  1. ↑ Gareth_Davies (26 February 2016). "Croydon Council confirms Fairfield Halls will close for two years in July for £30m rebuild". Croydon Advertiser.
  2. ↑ Turpin, Adrian (3 March 1995). "Don't mention the 'C' word". The Independent. Retrieved 10 June 2013. Ray Burns, of South Norwood (aka Captain Sensible), "joined The Damned after he met the drummer in the Fairfield Hall, where he worked as a toilet cleaner".
  3. ↑ Savage, Jon (4 August 2010). The England's Dreaming Tapes. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 328–329. ISBN 978-0-8166-7292-9. On Sunday evenings I was an usher, and Marc Bolan came down, and there were all these manic T.Rex fans. It was the policy at the Fairfield Hall not to let anyone get up and have a good time. But I got involved in this rush to the front, swept along with the crowd. I was in with all these sweaty female bodies and looked up at Marc Bolan and thought, that's the job for me. At that point I decided to make an effort, and get practising.
  4. ↑ Sellers, R and Hogg, J (2011), Little Ern: The authorised biography of Ernie Wise, Pan Macmillan, ISBN 9780283071577, p.166
  5. ↑ Samantha Booth (18 July 2016). "Fairfield Halls charity cannot afford to pay staff redundancy as trust files for administration". Croydon Advertiser.
  6. ↑ Gareth_Davies (26 February 2016). "Croydon Council confirms Fairfield Halls will close for two years in July for £30m rebuild". Croydon Advertiser.
  7. ↑ Chris Baynes (7 October 2015). "Major plans to transform Fairfield Halls and 'outdo the South Bank' unveiled". Croydon Guardian.

Coordinates: 51°22′20″N 0°5′45″W / 51.37222°N 0.09583°W / 51.37222; -0.09583

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