Byre Theatre 2: A  Personal Reflection
 

Rarely can so much important urban development have arisen from such modest beginnings. It would be 1967. I was a partner in the St. Andrews architectural practice of Rodger Architects with my father, Tom Rodger. In addition I was teaching at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. Mostly this meant that I worked as a practicing architect in the evenings and at the weekends and was at the college in Dundee during four days each week. One day each week during teaching terms I was in the office.

It was one of my days in St. Andrews. As was usual this was the opportunity to catch up on what each of us had been doing and plan ahead. I remember it clearly. My father flicked a letter across his desk. It was from the Town Clerk of St. Andrews addressed to the practice but more personally to my father. “Dear Mr Rodger,“ and so on. The letter referred to a meeting of the St. Andrews Town Council the previous week at which a decision had been made to invite us to prepare plans for the conversion of a derelict double storey stone terrace house in Abbey Street into four old persons homes, as part of the Council’s public sector housing stock.

There had been no prior intimation that this might happen. There had been no discussion with anyone about the project nor was there any mention about fees or the terms of engagement. There was a clear expectation that the project should be entered into expeditiously. In all respects it was presented as a routine conversion project. In the context of St. Andrews there was also a clear expectation, not even mentioned, that the external stone structure would be retained.

For the practice at the time this was an important new client because, except for a couple of public sector housing projects each comprising three or four flats almost all the major architectural work for the Council had, in recent years, been undertaken by another firm of architects. Perhaps this was, yet again, one of the small projects for which the Council may have thought that we were the appropriate firm.

So it was, armed with this extremely scant brief from the Town Clerk, that it was agreed that I should have a look at this new commission and work out what would be entailed. So I did the obvious investigations and started with getting a site plan from the Council offices and having a look at the existing building. The building itself was constructed in good quality ashlar stone-work typical of, and in much the same style, as the classical terraces such as Queens Gardens, Queen’s Terrace, Hope Street and a few others. Presumably it was of about the same date. The building fronted directly on to the pavement and abutted houses north and south although it was not one of an integrated designed terrace. The others were quite different; they were from an earlier time and of different and lower quality construction. One in a row, like its neighbours, it had a garden to the west.

Reviewing the Council’s site plans it was clear that the Council owned a good deal of the property in the vicinity though not the house immediately to the south. That was privately owned by Mr and Mrs Dredge. Beyond that, to the south, however, was the original Byre Theatre that was owned by the council. Beyond that again down Abbey Street and around the corner along Greenside Place was all Council property. Although still in use, all of this property was in a very dilapidated state. Separate from this Abbey Street and Greenside Place frontage property there was another large area in Council ownership. This land was one of the original “lang rigs” running from the grand frontage on South Street right down to Greenside Place with the large, very old, property known as South Court occupying the South Street frontage. The garden and house together stretch the full length of Abbey Street from South Strteet to Greenside Place .

Within a couple of weeks we had prepared a new site plan of the area and went to see Neil McKenzie, the Town Clerk. No doubt Neil thought that we were coming to refine the brief for the four old persons homes that he was expecting. We had other matters to discuss. Firstly, we laid down the drawing showing the Council’s land holdings in the immediate area. To the site plan we had added a red marker line around the perimeter of the holding thus showing how the various parcels of land connected together – with the Dredge property, surrounded by Council property, forming an intrusion from Abbey Street - but including the lang rig of South Court.

Three new propositions were then introduced for consideration. First among these was consideration of the existing Byre Theatre. Now it must be remembered that the Byre Theatre had a very special place in the life of the city and indeed more widely in the world of theatre. It was much cherished as an extraordinary, unique part of the city’s physical fabric and as an ongoing organisation that had served the community over many years while also being the training ground for many distinguished members of the acting and theatre community. Extraordinary and decrepit though it certainly was, it was steeped in tradition.

There were, however, problems hanging over the Byre, some of which were obvious but had been tolerated as part of the Byre culture for many years – for all of its life. Some were less obvious but threatened the very existence of the institution.

When actors came on stage from the right it was not uncommon for them to have raindrops gleaming on their greasepaint. The reason was that the route from the dressing room to that side of the stage was via an outside stair, across a room over the stage and then down a vertical ladder. If it was raining they got wet. And, of course, on the way actors had to navigate carefully to avoid squeaky floorboards. Mostly they were successful. All that was just part of the Byre experience for actors and audience alike.

If these were just two of the operational difficulties of running this small theatre a much more threatening situation arose from the physical aspects of the theatre building itself. It was a building beset with risks to life and limb; it was these issue of health and safety, particularly fire, and compliance with a progressively more demanding regulatory framework that eventually led, inexorably, to change. It was realised that if there were to be some accident, even a small accident, any critical evaluation of the Byre Theatre by those responsible for public safety could lead to the theatre being closed down and, even worse, closed down suddenly without any opportunity to create alternative arrangements. The fear was that any review by the Scottish Office in Edinburgh would take control of the theatre out of the hands of the Town Council.

Fortunately the new site plan laying out the Council’s land holdings provided the opportunity to develop an answer. For a theatre continuity is paramount. You dare not leave your audience without a theatre and then expect them to return when a new theatre is ready. The risk is that if a theatre closes its audience will find new interests and establish new behavioural patterns. The gap left by the closure will soon be filled by alternatives. This was the argument that made the opportunities implicit in the site plan so persuasive because here was the possibility to create a new theatre while keeping the old one running. The site for that new theatre could be the site originally identified for the four new flats of the original commission. If a new theatre facility could be constructed on that site the theatre operations could then he moved without interruption from the old building to the new. Once this had been achieved the buildings and land associated with the old Byre Theatre could then be consolidated with the other Council land holdings on Abbey Street and Greenside Place to form a substantial housing re-development site.

Even alone this proposition seemed attractive and might have gone ahead on its own merits but there remained further possibilities that could greatly enhance the overall scheme and indeed add significantly to the urban fabric of the City. This potential was in South Court and the lang rig. Might it be possible to create a pedestrian route through the South Court building and then down through the lang rig and in this way provide entry to the new theatre via this new pedestrian way and the garden of South Court?

Here there was a practical problem. About a year earlier the Town Council had commissioned the local architects, Cunningham Jack and Fisher, to redevelop the South Court building as residential accommodation for use as part of the Council’s public sector housing stock. Bill Jack, a very distinguished conservation architect, was a very appropriate person to undertake such a commission on a very old building fronting onto South Street, one of the historic streets not only of St. Andrews or Scotland but also of Europe. Work was well advanced. All approvals had been obtained and contracts had been let. Work on the site was about to start. Any alterations at this late stage would incur costs and disrupt the progress of the work. The initial response of the Town Clerk, responsible as he was for the good governance and the expeditious and efficient operations of Council business, was not to interfere with the arrangements and contracts already in place. Fortunately he was not averse to my father and I having a discussion with Bill Jack.

Bill Jack took no time at all to recognise the merits of the proposition. The question quickly changed from ‘whether it would be possible’, to, ‘how it could be done.’ As it was at the time South Court consisted of a three storey block filling the South Street frontage with a very low roofed ‘pend’ or access way through the middle into an enclosed courtyard. This was flanked by another wing on the east. Another block across the full width of the site completed the courtyard. So, it was (and remains) “U” shaped across the site. Strangely, or so it seemed at the time, there was no access from the courtyard to the lang rig garden. The proposition to establish a new pedestrian north/south link through the pend and the courtyard and then somehow through the southern block logically required this to be on the west boundary, thus retaining as much of the land as possible for use within the pedestrian–housing–theatre complex to the south.

As would be expected for a building of this vintage and style South Court is constructed of rough stone, random rubble, construction covered with render and lime wash. In line with their overall design strategy Cunningham Jack and Fisher revised their plans to include a throughway at the west end of the south wing. When the time eventually came to form the opening through the south wing into the lang rig and the old render was chipped away, there, beneath this covering of lime mortar, was a structurally sound stone archway where a throughway had previously existed. At some time in the long history of the building it had been filled in with stone, rendered over and lost from view. Far from altering this old building the new access way was restoring it to a previous form. At the time when design decisions had to be made, however, there was no such evidence. It was simply a question of judgement that some modification of South Court would be merited so as to achieve the benefits of the north-south pedestrian link.

There is special significance in opening up a new north-south pedestrian route within the old city of St. Andrews. The original fabric of the mediaeval city was organised around a set of three wide, roughly east-west streets (North Street, Market Street and South Street) converging gently on the great cathedral, now in ruins, to the east. Across these main streets run a few much smaller streets (Bell, Church, Union, College and North and South Castle Streets) together with quite a few very old laneways or vennels that are now pedestrian only - Butt’s Wynd, Crail’s Lane, Baker Lane, Loudens Close, Rose Lane and Thistle Lane - that were part of the earliest urban fabric of the city. (Westburn Lane is in the same pattern but is now a limited access roadway serving university buildings.) So, adding a new north-south lane was very firmly in the long tradition of the city. It may be the first such addition in several hundred years.

But this is jumping ahead. Over a fairly hectic two months a new urban design strategy including the site for which we had originally been commissioned - but now extending over a much wider area and incorporating quite new propositions - was put together for consideration by the Town Council at their monthly meeting. Apart from the urban design issues, which in themselves were substantial, the proposal presented the Council with substantial financial challenges. They were being asked to finance a new theatre and to commit to a major redevelopment involving perhaps thirty new houses instead of the four flats for which they had previously been making provision.

As always in the inner areas of St. Andrews there were local community issues associated with tradition and continuity to be considered. This is a small city in which the Preservation Trust has been a major participant in community activism and decision-making. In addition the community was very attached to the existing Byre Theatre. It might have been expected to think that if it had been good enough for the past fifty years it would be good enough for the next. The Director of the theatre and Chairman of the Byre Theatre Board of Management was a very high profile citizen, Alex Patterson. Alex was a journalist by profession and a playwright by vocation who had played a very significant role in keeping the theatre operating over many years. Through the plays that he wrote and produced he had created a very distinctive St. Andrews genre.

Alongside him there were other members of the Board and numerous local citizens who had been active participants in running the Byre doing everything from selling tickets through to taking parts in stage productions. One of these was my aunt, Jenny Rodger . She was a member of the Board and an active volunteer supporter of all the activities required to make a theatre run. Over many years she had frequently been on stage playing supporting roles to the professional actors. In a practical way she epitomised a long family association with the original Byre. She proudly kept a receipt for materials supplied by my grandfather (her father, Lawrie Rodger) used in the original construction of the theatre. He had donated his own time as a joiner to the building.

While the overall proposition was persuasive there were still many people to be won over. The decisive argument, however, was the risk that St. Andrews might loose its theatre and the continuing tradition of the Byre unless something was done. Realisation that the present situation could not be relied upon to continue became the decisive factor in facilitating change. There was also the attraction that after nearly fifty years with a very substandard theatre that could accommodate only 67 seats something a little bigger might now be possible. A preliminary feasibility study for the alternative site indicated that about 120 would be practical.

By the time that Council came to consider this first proposal Neil Mackenzie had been as busy with the Members of the Council and with the other officers of the Council as we had been preparing the ideas and the documentation for presentation. The ideas received a sympathetic hearing. It was agreed that the propositions were worth pursuing. It was a start but only a start. Much remained to be done before a practical way forward would be established.

Although the housing was by far the largest element of the proposal, both in terms of area and cost, the theatre was the element that challenged the imagination of all involved. It was also the most urgent because the new ‘master plan’ or development strategy required that the first part of the project had to be the creation of the new theatre. Only when this was completed and the theatre had moved into its new accommodation could work begin on the redevelopment of the rest of the site. There was therefore some urgency to design and build the new theatre as quickly as was reasonable.

At the time there had been only one community theatre built in the UK since the Second World War. Of course there had been great complexes such as the Festival Hall in London but the new community theatre in Leicester was the only new small theatre to be operated by a local theatre company for the local community. Even Leicester, however, was a very large city compared to St. Andrews. Their new theatre was also much larger than anything envisaged for St. Andrews. St. Andrews, on the other hand, though small was itself rather special. It had a university that was very large in relation to the city and it had a long continuous tradition of supporting local theatre. Even so, despite the obvious differences, a trip to visit the Leicester theatre and learn from that experience was called for. My father went off to Leicester and I researched the project through the architectural literature.

There were some major issues that fell easily into place. The potential of having the theatre entrance from the new north-south pedestrian way was obvious. It was also consistent with, and in some ways reminiscent of, the old Byre Theatre that was entered through a pend off Abbey Street into what had been a courtyard in the original dairy farm. For the new theatre the approach experience would be through the small medieval South Street entrance to the courtyard in the middle of South Court and then via the new restored opening in the south wing of South Court into the garden environment of the lang rig that already contained some quite old mature trees – a mulberry and a ginko biloba: the ginko biloba being a ‘living fossil’ connecting back the very earliest trees on earth – in itself a powerful symbol of continuity.

Keeping the new north south pedestrian way close to the western edge of the South Court lang rig meant that the site for the theatre could extend from the original Abbey Street frontage into the lang rig and spread north and south within the lang rig beyond the alignment of that site. Encroaching on the lang rig greatly extended the overall site area available for the theatre. On the other hand, from a cultural history point of view, it compromised the integrity of the rig itself.

Alongside the discussions about the urban structure and the urban design issues surrounding the theatre project there was the major housing project to be considered. The inner city location was considered to be particularly suitable for older people providing them with immediate access to the shops, cafes, cinemas, churches and other urban facilities. With this came an expectation of easy access and, wherever possible, direct access to the housing from the pedestrian system without involving steps or stairs.

So it was that the housing was designed around the perimeter of the Abbey Street / Greenside Place precinct. Single level units were set on the ground floor with direct access from pavement level. Above this a sheltered public access pedestrian way with ramp access to the new north south pedestrian route through South Court and the Lang rig, provided access to two-storey terrace housing. Because of the lie of the land, and South Court being much higher than most of Abbey Street, there was only a very gentle ramp was required to connect up to this new pedestrian access way. A separate housing cluster was developed fronting on to the new pedestrian route while car parking, with access from Greenside Place, was provided in the enclosed courtyard.

This same change in level between the South Street entrance and the ground level in Abbey Street also lent itself to raked theatre seating with the stage at the Abbey Street level with entrance at the back of the seating from the new pedestrian system in the lang rig.

While the proposal for the new theatre dominated the discussions and the public perceptions of the project the overall budget was dominated by the housing. Across both there was an expectation, indeed a requirement, that very limited funds would have to be used very effectively to provide maximum benefit. The Scottish Office housing standards and cost allowances set cost effective expectations for the housing component while the need to raise funds from the public in support of the new theatre meant that the theatre, too, would be on a very tight budget.

The original Byre Theatre had seats for sixty-seven. While tiny by any normal standards elsewhere The Byre had somehow survived for many years and indeed thrived. It was of course in part because of a very substantial volunteer contribution year after year by members of the St. Andrews community but this alone would not have sustained a successful theatre over the decades. No. The Byre had been successful because it had served the St. Andrews community well and it had proved itself to be a marvellous training ground that attracted a continuing flow of talent across the whole spectrum of theatre activities. Throughout its life there had always been a very, very small band of paid professionals who between them had to do everything that was needed to operate a theatre. Of course they had to act – and sometimes in several plays in quick succession. But, there were also sets to be built, tickets to be sold, patrons to be shown to their seats, cleaning to be done, books to be balanced, plays to be produced, ice cream to be sold, and so on. And all of this had to be done while setting high standards of theatre production in the most extraordinarily primitive facilities. In a very practical sense this was theatre as theatre workshop. It was a precious legacy that had contributed far and wide within the theatre community with significant further contributions to many other elements of the arts and entertainment business. As the project for a new Byre progressed this outreach of the old Byre became more and more apparent. The list of donors encompassed the globe; many of the great theatre and show business figures of the time contributed.

With this legacy, what do you do? In particular, the pressing architectural question was how big should the new theatre be. Could St. Andrews support a larger theatre? Would it support a larger theatre? Would a larger theatre serve, or even be able to serve, the same purposes as the old Byre? Of course, everyone wanted “better” facilities. No one wanted the actors to have to brave the elements between their dressing area and the stage! Raindrops on greasepaint were to be a thing of the past. But there is always a price.

In the event the question became; “How big a theatre could be fitted into the new site?” After exploring a whole array of contingent issues the answer was one hundred and twenty with the possibility of extending this number with occasional seating at the back to one hundred and forty . This was on the basis that seating would occupy the central space in the auditorium and that access would be exclusively from side aisles. In effect this was a decision that the best positions in the central locations in the new theatre would be occupied by patrons rather than by access ways just as in the old, much smaller, Byre with its single access aisle down the left hand side. Since this decision required relatively long continuous rows the building regulations required that patrons be able to enter or leave a seat without other patrons having to get up to make way for them. Of course, this meant that the spacing of rows had to be generous – and thus automatically provide good legroom. So there proved to be a good fit between ensuring that the centre of the theatre space was used for seating rather than an access aisle and providing generous seating arrangements.

The other constraining factor at this early stage was the space that would be occupied by the vertical structure necessary to support the roof. This may seem something of a detail but in a very constricted site every centimetre counts and with a tight budget every pound counts. The outcome of this situation was a decision to use load-bearing walls – as distinct from independent columns – to support the roof. But to do this the walls themselves, or at least the part that was carrying the roof load, had to be quite thick. The solution was to use a particular type of building block formed of cement and sawdust that provided good acoustic and insulating properties and build it in a staggered “z” or echelon formation. In effect the z provided the stiff column to carry the roof structure. With his arrangement it was possible to maximise the internal space and therefore the seating capacity while also achieving other important objectives.

So it was decided that the maximum number that could reasonably be fitted into the site that was available would be accepted. It was about twice the size of the old Byre; would there be enough patrons in a relatively small city and catchment to fill it? At the time no one knew whether this was too big or too small. It was just what was available. It promised to be a great improvement on the old theatre. Everyone, from the Town Council to the Board of Management of the theatre company and the wider St. Andrews community were content with that outcome. The challenge quickly became how soon could a new theatre be built. The answer was about two years during which time the old theatre would keep operating in its old premises while the new one would be constructed up Abbey Street on the site originally designated for housing for the elderly.

Practical support for the project came from far and wide in the form of donations from many of the great names of theatre and entertainment. This enthusiasm continued through to the eventual opening of the New Byre. There was no difficult in recruiting theatre celebrities for the occasion. On the great day one of the doyens of Scottish theatre and star of the TV series, Dr Finlay's Casebook, Andrew Cruikshank, did the honours. But he was not alone. The new building was full of famous personalities of stage and screen. Messages of support and congratulations flooded in from around the world. Opening a new theatre is recognised by the whole world of theatre as a very special occasion.

Though it is not a matter of any significance, except for me, I could not be at the opening. Having dreamt up the original concept and worked regularly with my father and others in developing the detailed design, I was at home in bed ill with the ‘flu waiting anxiously for news of the occasion from Margaret, my wife, my mother and father and, of course, from my Aunt Jenny. Just as my grandfather had played a significant role in establishing the first Byre Theatre the next two generations had built on that family involvement and brought the New Byre into being. My aunt continued on the board through the transition and for some years. When she died a memorial commemorating her service of over fifty years was placed in the foyer.

It is interesting forty years later to reflect on the role played by the New Byre - Byre Theatre 2. In addition to maintaining live theatre in the city for thirty years its very presence helped establish a new pedestrian way and public space as an addition to St. Andrews’ urban fabric. But perhaps most significant of all it secured a central area position for theatre. When additional site area became available through the acquisition of an adjoining property and then and when the National Lottery emerged as a new source of funding the scene was set. Having successfully supported a 120-seat theatre the St. Andrews community could now look to a larger theatre and aspire to some of the supporting facilities that such a theatre might expect to enjoy. By all accounts the transformation to Byre Theatre 3 has been successfully achieved.



Allan Rodger
arodger@optusnet.com.au