Victoria Hall was officially opened on November 21, 1872. The Institute, as it was known in those days, was built by Sir Titus Salt as a place of recreation, education and entertainment for the people of Saltaire, his model industrial village. It was closed in the mid-1980s due to poor state of repair but re-opened about eight years ago after a million-pound facelift. Thousands more have now been spent on it by the Salts Foundation. Jim Greenhalf reports.

VICTORIA HALL has become a home to large weddings, the occasional concert, public meetings and the largest exhibition of Victorian reed organs in the country.

In the future, however, it could begin to be a regular venue for a variety of other activities - school speech days, dance events and theatrical productions - for Viccy Hall, as it's known, now possesses a set of stage lights, curtains, and a stereo sound system.

The charitable Salts Foundation has spent £30,000 or more rigging out the main hall where in the past folk singers such as Julie Felix have performed although some of them have had to provide their own microphones and sound systems.

"What we are trying to do is regenerate the hall for the people of Shipley for amateur dramatics, school speech days. It was an open concert platform, but now we have a stage," said Alex Law, chairman of the Salts Foundation.

Neil Bohana, head of technical services for Bradford Theatres, gave a little more detail about the new additions.

"We've got lights above the stage and front tabs and a small amount of masking so that people in the wings can't be seen from the front of house. We helped in drawing together a specification for the installation. The basic lighting and sound system is new, as is the control box (located in the balcony).

"In the past we have had concerts here and the performers have had to bring their own microphones. Small orchestras had to bring their own lighting. Now we have our own including some front-of-house spotlights too."

Alex Law hopes the lights, drapes, microphones and sound-system, which can play tapes and CDs, will open up the number of entertainment, educational and recreational uses to which Sir Titus Salt's magnificently appointed building can be put.

Bill Nunn, the Foundation's vice-chairman, admitted that the one disadvantage the hall had for theatrical events was inadequate dressing-room space. However, there are a number of rooms in and around the main hall which might be used for such purposes. The ground-floor room adjacent to the hall, currently occupied by the reed organ museum could be converted into dressing-rooms once the museum transfers across the hall to the room formerly occupied by the public library.

Since the closure of the Library Theatre ten or 11 years ago amateur dramatic companies have found themselves in difficulty (professional venues such as the Alhambra are expensive to hire). Buttershaw's St Paul's Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society is a case in point.

For nearly 30 years the company has produced an annual youth pantomime to develop the art of musical comedy and introduce young talent aged between seven and 17 into the company's senior society.

For a dozen years or more the Society staged this annual show at the Library Theatre. Since then, apart from a brief period at the old Bradford Playhouse, the Society has had to take its pantomime out of town, to Cleckheaton Town Hall and now Brighouse Civic Hall.

The possibility of bringing the pantomime back into Bradford, under the lights of Victoria Hall, certainly interested Society member Alan Hirst.

"We would have a look at it, by arrangement of course, for the pantomime next year. It makes sense to get it back into Bradford rather than going out to Kirklees or Calderdale," he said.

As well as the main hall, there are three splendid rooms upstairs: the York Room, the Glen Room and the Dale Room. With their huge windows and high ceilings these rooms can all be hired on a sliding scale of booking fees.

When Victoria Hall was officially opened in the winter of 1872 it must have been one of the grandest public buildings in Shipley, if not the grandest.

It represented the finer strand of the Victorian Protestant work ethic - not merely the belief in self help but the conviction that ordinary people could and should strive to improve themselves.

Titus Salt did not believe that being born into a poor or modest home meant that a person was socially doomed. Salt's own background was far from propitious; as a boy he liked to draw and wanted to study medicine but the family couldn't afford to pay for his tuition.

And yet, Salt was to become one of Victorian England's greatest industrialists; a self-made man who believed he had a God-given duty to improve the spiritual lot of his workers by providing them with material benefits: secure employment, decent housing and a variety of uplifting or diverting recreational activities.

To the north of Saltaire village he provided 11 acres of parkland. In the middle of the village he built his Institute and put in it magnificently-appointed lecture halls, a library stocked with a dazzling array of newspapers and periodicals as well as books, billiard rooms and much else.

The forward-looking Salt did something else too. He set up the Salts Foundation so that after his death the principle of self-improvement might not be curtailed for want of money.

Victoria Hall went through an uncertain period in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After more than a century of use the building was declared unsafe. Eventually, after prolonged delay, Bradford Council gave the place an internal make-over costing about £1.6m. That decor remains in good repair.

Since 1981 the Salts Foundation has leased Victoria Hall to Bradford Council for a nominal annual rent of £5. The agreement ends in 2003, the bi-centenary of Sir Titus Salt's birth. What is the likely fate of Victoria Hall, which will have been opened for 131 years?

"We are renegotiating the lease now. I have already had meetings with some of the officers. There are several ways we could go," said Alex Law.

Indeed: the Foundation could take back control of Victoria Hall as well as the expense of running it. The trustees would then be in a position to determine the future of the hall. For example, would it go on hosting vast wedding parties and the occasional concert, or regular concerts and theatrical productions plus the occasional wedding?

Mr Law wouldn't be drawn on detail except to say that the trustees were hoping for a new agreement with the council so that Victoria Hall could be used to best advantage by the people of Shipley.

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