24 February 2007

Front-of-House Manager of the

Royal Hippodrome Theatre, Eastbourne

Mark Jones grew up in Blackburn and moved to Eastbourne in 1989. Apart from his interest in theatre history, his main work is musical – as entertainer, accompanist and church organist. Since 2000 he has been Front-of-House Manager at the Royal Hippodrome. He is currently researching the history of the Eastbourne Hippodrome Company Ltd.  Mark organizes Theatre tours at the Hippodrome and along with John Pick co wrote the book "The Sensational Story of Eastbourne's Royal Hippodrome".  It is an intriguing narrative; the book sets the story against a unique social history of the town. 

CaSPIR UK is a scientific run group and our main aim is to investigate the alleged reported activity at locations, so it is important to us to find out as much information as possible about the location we are investigating.  As such, CaSPIR UK’s very own field investigators Kurt and Julie Slater had the pleasure of interviewing Mark at the Royal Hippodrome Theatre on Saturday 24^th February 2007 prior to our investigation there. 

CaSPIR:  Hello Mark, please can you tell us how long you have been working here at the Hippodrome Theatre?

Mark: I’ve been working here as front of house manager for about 8 years. 

CaSPIR: What is your view on the possible existence of the paranormal?

Mark: Well in the time I’ve been here I’ve probably moved from being really quite sceptical to believing more.  But since my early days I’ve always been locking up late and usually felt like something was following me around.  I use to do guide tours around the town of Eastbourne and there were all sorts of stories I come across connected with the place, that through my research I have since found out are complete rubbish!  There is always the one of people who had hung themselves in the building that isn’t true.  But I’ve had several experiences, especially in the last two years, I’ve seen things and I’m absolutely certain now that there are spirit people or spirit beings who come back to visit the building, I think they come back because they like to be here.  It always seems to be a positive sort of energy.  One medium lady from a few years ago came to visit and when asked to sit down in the auditorium stalls she said ‘I can’t the seats are all full’ like there was an audience there waiting for a show to happen! 

CaSPIR: Can you tell us anything about the history of the Hippodrome?

Mark: It was 1883 when it opened, August bank holiday weekend, until the end of 1904 it was the Theatre Royal and Opera House.  It presented a mixture of straight drama, comic drama, melodrama and touring opera.  Tastes changed around about the time that Queen Victoria died, and lots more ordinary working people were able to afford a week by the seaside by 1900 and they tended to stay down at the eastern end of the seafront, added to which of course the new theatre opened on the Pier in 1901, the Devonshire Park theatre was revamped as a posh Edwardian playhouse in 1903, so by 1904 you had three theatres competing for pretty much the same sort of audience.  Now the manager of the Hippodrome at the time who had had virtually no experience of theatres at all, thought he’d make it into a variety hall, which was really what the working man wanted, and so in December 1904 it reopened as the Eastbourne Hippodrome, and dropped the word Royal for a while, and from then on you had the likes of Houdini who appeared the following Easter, and all the great names who had come from the music halls into variety.  Until 1958 it was privately owned, as a variety theatre, until the council bought the building by arrangement from the previous owners and since then it’s been a summer season theatre. 

The reason the theatre was built in the first place was because the tradesmen of the town were panicking because visitors would only come for about 9 or 10 weeks in the summer, often having their groceries sent here as they either owned or rented a second home in Eastbourne, and the town has mushroomed in size from 10,000 to over 20,000 in ten years up to 1881, winters were 75% unemployed, can you imagine 3 out of 5 adults unemployed for large parts of the winter?  So they had lots of problems of drunkenness and crime and delinquency, I mean you talk about kids on Asbo’s and that today but back then it was as bad if not worse in the early 1880’s!  So the tradesmen got together and said we need to attract more people here and over a longer season, not just in August and September.  People decamped here in the last weekend in July normally.

CaSPIR: Is that how Eastbourne started off as a rich person’s playground?

Mark: Yes, it was designed by the Duke of Devonshire who owned two thirds of the relevant land as a rich person’s select genteel holiday resort, much like Buxton and Derbyshire which he also practically owned.  But of course speculative building on the bits he didn’t owned almost doubled the population, then no work no staple industry, no proper fishing, nothing.  So that’s why the theatre got built because these tradesmen said ‘a proper theatre that presented plays and operas and things like that in a proper setting in a purpose built theatre will bring people in’.  Well fortunately Phipps the architect was working in Hastings in 1882, and they went to see him and said we’ve got no money but we need a theatre in Eastbourne, and Phipps was so well connected in London, mainly through Masonic affiliations, he said ‘well getting the money together isn’t a problem, I can do that and I’ll run it as a speculation and I’ll build it with my associates and their money and I will lease it out to a manager who will pay a quarterly rent and run the theatre at his profit or loss.’ And that’s how Phipps got his money back and he remained the proprietor until his death, 14 years later.  It’s pretty much unique in that it was the only one that Phipps designed that he remained the owner of. 

CaSPIR: Can you tell us about any deaths which may have occurred inside the theatre?

Mark: There is one particular death that is significant.  It occurred in 1890, and this I am going to read you now is one of the bits of ‘rubbish’ that I discovered in a little book from the local library and it says: ‘Early on in the days of the opera house, the manager turned the gas lights low, climbed on a chair, pulled a noose around his neck and jumped.  His ghost still haunts the theatre.’  This is rubbish!  I researched and discovered that the manager in question was a man called Wallace Roberts.  Now the first six and a half years here and been a succession of messy managers who had come and gone and failed to make a success of it for various reasons.  In January 1890, an established theatrical firm: ‘Wallace Roberts and Archer’ took over the running of the Hippodrome.  They had run a company for ages with Fred Bartlett as their leading actor.  The idea was that Bartlett and Archer were to continue touring around the country as they owned a few other theatres at the time (Croydon, Lincoln and Lemmington Spa later on) the benefits being if one theatre was doing badly one week another might be making money.  They could also save on the cost of posters as well as they run their own productions too and had their own touring companies.  The plan was to leave Mr. Roberts in charge here at the Eastbourne Theatre Royal.  Around the end of September, a local journalist was coming to interview Roberts and Fred Bartlett.  Roberts was delayed in coming to the interview because somewhere in the theatre he’d been trying to grab a bite to eat and had bought his crusty bread roll, and not looking what he was doing had sliced his hand rather than the bread roll.  Now these days we think nothing of it, you go to hospital and they might give you tetanus and send you home and no problem, in those days no antibiotics, no tetanus injection and blood poisoning set in.  About four weeks later at around 4:45am of the 29^th October 1890, Wallace Roberts died in the upstairs flat at the front of the building, ages 43.  Now I am certain that the little story found in the local library book has developed because someone and confused the cause of the injury, a cut to the hand, as being dying ‘by his own hand’ and assumed he took it himself.  I’ve been through every week’s local in my research now, from 1833 and I’m in 1932 at the moment, and there is no record of any person committing suicide in the building.  Now earlier I mentioned I used to feel there was somebody walking around with me at night, since I discovered the thing about how Wallace Roberts died it has not happened, now it could be just something completely inside my head that’s settled itself or it could be that Wallace Roberts is now satisfied, because in those days suicide was a crime, if you attempted suicide and failed and lived to tell the tale you were put in court!  Definitely one interpretation of it is that Wallace Roberts wanted the truth to be recorded by somebody because it’s in print that the manager had killed him self and he wanted to say ‘I wasn’t a coward, it was a total accident, I attended three local doctors and I died and it’s nothing to do with suicide at all.’  There is another story from several sources that a stage manager fell from the fly floor above the stage and somehow caught himself in the ropes and strangled himself, now again, I’ve only got to 1932 but I’ve found nothing so far. 

CaSPIR: Can you tell us about any of the alleged ghosts which are meant to haunt the theatre?

Mark: Well years ago before I was associated with this theatre, I suppose in about 1990, I used to sometimes have a drink with a chap who occasionally worked here, and one night he came in the pub and said: ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve seen?’  Now I hadn’t even been in this building at this time, and he said: ‘I looked up at the Fly Floor in the Hippodrome and I saw this fellow walk right from one side almost to the other, I went to have a look and there was nothing there, just fresh air, but I could describe what he was wearing and everything!’  Now whether it was this alleged man who fell and his spirit keeps repeating the event I don’t know but this guy was only about 30 at the time and he wasn’t into paranormal things at all but he was pretty shaken up by that. 

The most amazing thing is a lady who is seen sitting in the top balcony (Grand Circle) and she is normally seen when there are lights on, when there’s something going on and there’s plenty of energy going through the place.  The guys who did the restoration work around the boxes in the early 1990’s were up on their scaffolding by the roof and one of them turned round and said: ‘Who let that woman in?’  She was sitting there as plain as day. 

Two or three years ago a coach drivers wife was watching the summer variety show, we’d don’t normally sell tickets for the top balcony as there’s no lift and most of our audience for these shows are elderly, so the coach driver and his wife were just sitting up there on their own and she came down and said: ‘I’ve just seen a ghost up there wearing Victorian clothes she just got clearer and clearer!’  And the same thing happened last year with another woman who’d never been in the theatre before and who knew nothing about this incident reporting seeing exactly the same thing in the same place!  Now it’s either a trick with the lighting or it’s some dear sole that manifests herself to watch the shows.  Now she doesn’t show herself on vigils and my theory as daft as it sounds it that she draws the energy when the place is full and when the lights are on. 

Last October I did a ghost tour here, it was Halloween weekend and I thought I’d tell some of the stories associated with this place.  I was sat at the back of the stalls there and there was a dark shape I saw out the corner of my eye, and the seat next to me moved as if someone had sat down next to me!  I just got the name Robert keep coming to me, and then the word arm and I got the urge to put my hand out and I felt this guy had lost his arm and he was trying to show me and then I had the colour blue.  Well there was a huge convalescent camp in the First World War, and the ‘blue boys’ were injured, wounded in blue uniform and there were thousands of them.  That was weird.

Other people have seen a chap in a top hat, and a cape standing in the wings and I saw the figure of a little boy crouching down upstairs on the top level one night and I was locking up a little child crouching down again I could describe the clothes he was wearing but I haven’t seen him since.

CaSPIR: Is that where the poorer people used to sit?

Mark: Near there yeah, but he was outside where they would have gone in, he looked about 7 or 8, and I was almost moved to speak to him it was that real, but I thought to myself you’re locking up at 11 o clock at night don’t be stupid you know!  So I went away and turned round and looked back and nothing was there. 

CaSPIR: Do you know when the first report of alleged activity occurred and who it was by?

Mark: No I don’t except there was another story, which goes back to just after the second world war, late 1940’s, when the theatre reopened and the manager at the time was doing a guided tour, and when he began he counted up how many people he had and part way round the tour a man he hadn’t noticed before suddenly began to interrupt him and ask very searching questions.  This man seemed to know an awful lot of intimate detail about the place.  The manager got so infuriated with him that he counted the heads again and realized that he had one more than he had started with.  When they got further round the theatre suddenly the interruptions stopped and he counted up again and he was back to the number he first started with.  I’m not sure how credible that is but it’s certainly one of the earliest reports.

CaSPIR: Has anything unusual or strange ever happened whilst on one of your theatre tours and have any of the tourists experienced anything?

Mark: Apart from a lady who wouldn’t go across the fly floor, no I don’t think we have.  When we did the ghost tour back in October there were 2 or 3 strange things on film.  One of them was obviously a fly or a moth but there was one strange thing looking down on the stalls area looking down from the stage, and there was this really quite large blob of indistinct light rising slowly and steadily with the camera still.  We can’t account for anything moving, but it was almost like somebody being seated and they were pushing themselves up to full height as it rose about 3 feet.  One time when I was sitting under the stage in the old orchestra pit, I had researched the chap who was the old conductor who didn’t die here but died fairly suddenly while still in post here.  We had been calling out to him and there were guys sitting under the stage close by and immediately after we called out they saw a blob of light come out and where you would stoop to get through the door to the orchestra pit this blob of light drops down then rises again as if it’s somebody walking along and stooped down because of the door.

CaSPIR: Has any of this reported activity ever been filmed on footage or photographs and if so is it possible for us to view any of this evidence?

Mark: I have a copy of the DVD and I’m sure I could show it to you, I don’t have it with me but it was filmed by a group called Exposé, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you seeing the footage. 

CaSPIR: Do you feel that there is a particular part of the theatre that is most active?

Mark: Yes the fly floor above the stage seems to attract a lot of activity.  The top balcony too because so many people have seen this lady there.  Sometimes in the boxes people have reported hearing noises and in the sides of the stage.  The only slightly negative thing is like this little irritable man in the dress circle.  Mostly it’s on that top floor where the poorest people would have crowded in and it would have been the busiest and again towards the back of the stalls area where people would have crowded in and noises on the stage.  Everything is mainly positive though there was a café across the road in the 50’s called the Happydrome Café.  If walls and fabric retain some sound memory of people I mean the man who run the place in the early 20^th century reckoned he could get 1500 seated and a further 200 or 300 standing just imagine two audiences a night absolutely roaring!?

 CaSPIR: Do you feel then that there are any circumstances which may bring about activity?

Mark: Well people say that there have been peaks of activity when there is doubt over the future of the building and we’re at the moment looking at the present lease which ends next month but there is more than just the pain peeling off of the walls the building is decaying but there is a plan being drawn up to regenerate the area with this building as the spear head.  This building has been a grade 2 listed building for 6 years now so would be very expensive to pull down now.  The last couple of year there seem to have been more people seeing more and varied things so…

CaSPIR: Can you tell us anything about Exposé’s visit here which may be of interest to us before our investigations begin this evening?

Mark: Yes well they had a male medium with them who picked up on a seemed to pick up a theatre cleaner being around, they had some interesting anomalies and sounds on film. 

CaSPIR: We will be conducting an EVP experiment this evening which involves using a DVD of Todd Slaughter who allegedly haunts this theatre, has anyone ever tried using EVP sounds or music as a bait to try and attract spirits before and if so do you know what the outcome was?

Mark: I don’t think they have. Yes certainly Todd Slaughter had been here in his farewell tour in 1953 I think it was.  That’s an interesting experiment, which reminds me of something I had thought of with the chap who was the conductor of the theatre orchestra for 25 years, finding some of his music and sitting backstage playing that to see what happens! 

CaSPIR: Mark this has been a really interesting interview and you have certainly done some brilliant research there, thank you so much for your time and hospitality to us.

Mark: You’re welcome and I hope it’s an interesting evening for you! 

Mark Jones’ book "The Sensational Story of Eastbourne's Royal Hippodrome" can be obtained from the Royal Hippodrome Theatre on performance nights, and all good bookshops, and retails at £17.95.  Mark kindly gave Caz a free copy of this which is a most interesting read!  Mark’s Hippodrome Theatre Tours information can be obtained by ringing: 01323 415522/01323 507629, but the full tour will involve climbing a lot of stairs and is not suitable for people with walking difficulties.

*In the instances that CaSPIR UK have a medium present at a location the medium is not given any information gained from interviews prior to the investigation.*

Interview by Caz Streeter

© County Society for Paranormal Investigation and Research - 2008

 

Last Updated 27/07/2008