When Parliament finally approved a plan for a London & Birmingham Railway in 1833, Robert Stephenson (of ‘Rocket’ fame) was appointed as Chief Engineer.
He would spend much of the decade overseeing the country’s largest civil engineering project. Euston station, London’s first rail terminal, opened in 1837, and when the first direct train left Euston for Birmingham the journey time was cut from 12 to just five hours.
But there was a problem.
Euston was at the bottom of a shallow incline, and engines heading north did not yet have the power to climb to Camden. For the next six years, a huge winding gear had to haul trains up the hill on cables. The area just north of Euston, including Camden Town and Chalk Farm, consequently became vitally important. It was here that Stephenson built his rail yards and commissioned his Resident Engineer, Robert Dockray, to build him a ‘round house’ for maintaining and storing goods engines.
Construction began in 1846. Dockray’s design divided the space into 24 bays, with a massive turntable wheel in the centre that engines could be rolled onto, before being spun around and rolled to a bay for servicing or storage.
Engineers would work from inspection pits beneath the bays. The circular building was 160 feet in diameter, topped by a broad, conical roof supported by 24 columns and cast-iron girders. It had bracketed eaves, slate, and a louver to let the smoke out.
Opening in 1847, the Roundhouse was justly celebrated as a marvellous feat of civil engineering. But it served as a repair and maintenance shed for less than two decades before the rapid evolution of railway technology rendered it obsolete. By the 1860s, engines were too long for the turntable.
In 1869 a new use was found for the building as WS Gilbey of Gilbey’s Gin took on the lease and began to use the Roundhouse as a bonded warehouse for liquor.
The Gilbeys built a wooden gallery around the inside of the building, and painted over the louver glass in the roof to protect valuable stock from sunlight.
Later, during the Second World War, the Gilbeys – believing that the Roundhouse would be an easy target for German bombers – transferred much of their stock to Bow. But despite their fears, the building survived unscathed.
Even at this time, the remarkable design and construction of the building attracted significant numbers of students and admirers of architecture, though visitors had to gain permission from the Surveyor in charge of the permanent Customs guard, due to the high value of the stock.
Altogether Gilbey’s would remain in residence at the Roundhouse for more than 90 years, but was not until 1964 that it began its life as a cultural venue due to the work of playwright Arnold Wesker, the Trade Unions and the Centre 42 movement.
In 1960, playwright Arnold Wesker had a new idea for spreading the best of culture beyond the elite.
He criticised the Labour movement for neglecting the arts and one trade union took up his challenge. The 1960 Trades Unions Congress passed a resolution on agenda item 42 to conduct an enquiry into the arts. Wesker’s initiative took the name Centre 42.
Centre Forty-two will be a cultural hub, which, by its approach and work, will destroy the mystique and snobbery associated with the arts… where the artist is brought in closer contact with his audience, enabling the public to see that artistic activity is part of their daily lives.
Centre 42 Annual Report 1961-62
After staging a successful festival in the town of Wellingborough, Wesker’s team found themselves flooded with requests for similar events. But though the festivals proved successful, they were left with massive debts, and their offices in Fitzroy Square proved inadequate – they needed a centre.
Journalist Alan Brien told Wesker about the Roundhouse, which had been taken over by clothing and property tycoon Louis Mintz, who had no clear plan for its use. With the backing of a host of influential names, Wesker presented his plans for the Roundhouse and persuaded Mintz to grant him a 19-year lease.
Soon after, at a meeting at the Labour Party Conference, the Prime Minister offered to host a tea party at Downing Street to raise money for the initiative.
I was appealing to everyone for help, from Harold Wilson to Prince Philip. Wilson gave me a very competent administrator, George Hoskins, who created order out of chaos. We gathered a group of trustees and found the money to commission René Allio, a French architect, to design the new Roundhouse. The model was built, and we then needed £650,000 – £400,000 to build and enough money to run without subsidy for two years.
Arnold Wesker
The Roundhouse – now renamed Centre 42 after the movement itself – became a cutting-edge arts venue, opening with the legendary 1966 launch of radical underground newspaper the International Times which featured a little known band called Pink Floyd.
Over the course of the decade the Roundhouse would go on to host it’s first theatre performance with Peter Brook’s Themes on the Tempest in 1968 and stage some of the most experimental, controversial and memorable performances of the 60s including Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Steven Berkoff’s Metamorphosis, Tony Richardson’s Hamlet, Sex Pistols, The Living Theatre, Fleetwood Mac and The Doors.
I think that was one of the best concerts I’ve ever done
Jim Morrison on The Doors’ at the Roundhouse
However as the Roundhouse reached the turn of the decade, the struggle to raise funds for the venue severely limited Wesker’s ability to achieve his ambitions for the venue. In 1970, he resigned.
The 1970s were no less controversial or experimental for the Roundhouse with the decade beginning with theatre critic, Kenneth Tynan’s revue Oh! Calcutta! described by it’s creator as ‘tasteful pornography for the thinking voyeur.’
Featuring songs and sketches by Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepherd and John Lennon along with a great deal of nudity, the production ran for four sold-out weeks before transferring to the West End where it would run until 1980.
Sunday night gigs were also a regular feature with DJ Jeff Dexter bringing some of the most exciting names in music to the Roundhouse including David Bowie (with The Hype), Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Genesis, Marc Almond, Elton John and The Rolling Stones.
Theatrical experimentation continued throughout the decade with Andy Warhol’s Pork, 1789 by Le Theatre du Soleil, Ken Campbell and Chris Langham’s Illuminatus!, a season of work by Lindsay Kemp, Buzz Goodbody’s Hamlet with Ben Kingsley, the premier of David Hare’s Epsom Downs by Joint Stock and the return of artists such as Peter Brook and Steven Berkoff.
Rock musicals became a regular feature of the programme with shows such as Catch My Soul (a rock version of Othello), Godspell, Rock Carmen and the original production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat fresh from it’s first run at the Young Vic.
Punk arrived in 1976 with a year of concerts including The Damned, The Clash, The Ramones, Patti Smith and The Stranglers. Then in 1978, it was post-punk with Blondie, Elvis Costello, The Police and Adam and the Ants.
Towards the end of the decade, the Royal Exchange Theatre brought a season of productions from Manchester including The Lady from the Sea with Vanessa Redgrave. They returned in 1981 with The Duchess of Malfi with Helen Mirren and Bob Hoskins and The Misanthrope with Tom Courtenay.
As before, the funding of the Roundhouse was an ongoing issue. Thelma Holt, who had taken over the venue in 1977 faced the same problems as her predecessors and by the early 1980s, a lack of ongoing subsidy meant the building had to close.
In the end what I couldn’t do at the Roundhouse was raise money for productions. I couldn’t get commercial sponsorship. I wanted to programme as I pleased and it wasn’t possible.
Thelma Holt
After almost two decades of live music and experimental performance, the Roundhouse closed in 1983 and would remain so for years to come.
Having closed in 1983, the former engine repair shed and experimental arts venue faced dereliction and an uncertain future.
Camden and the Greater London Council acquired the lease and a number of proposals to revitalise the building failed over the ensuing years. From 1983, there were attempts to establish a Black Arts Centre at the Roundhouse enabling a programme of music, theatre and community projects.
Funding was not forthcoming and with the dissolution of the Greater London Council in 1986, Camden Council looked at options to sell the venue. By 1991 Camden Council invited invitations to tender for the sale of the Roundhouse with mixed results.
In 1991 there were plans to build Earth Focus by an educational charity, the Environmental Awareness Trust with a permanent two-floor exhibition whose centrepiece was to be a massive sixty-foot globe.
In April 1992 the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester who had transferred productions to the Roundhouse in the preceding years also took an interest. With the public support of actors Tom Courtenay and Vanessa Redgrave, they planned to use the Roundhouse as a London home.
By 1995, the Royal Institute of British Architects had other plans and came close to using their vast archives of architectural drawings within the Roundhouse. In fact by the early 1990s, over thirty organisations were reportedly interested in taking over the Roundhouse but none of them came to anything.