From Basil Brush to Broadway: how Fairfield Halls came back from panto hell

Like a stately modernist weathervane, Fairfield Halls has always been an indicator of Croydon’s ambitions. When the concert hall and theatre complex opened in 1962, it was a beacon of the London suburb’s progressive vision, billed as the Royal Festival Hall Mark II, but with even better acoustics. In this brave new world of skyscrapers and motorways, it provided state-of-the-art cultural facilities, hosting the Beatles, Stevie Wonder and Kraftwerk – along with wrestling matches and televised snooker. But by the 1990s, as the town’s modernist lustre faded to stained concrete, the billing was mostly occupied by slot-filling tribute bands of tribute bands and pantomimes featuring Basil Brush.

“Spectacularly awful,” is how Colm Lacey describes the state of Fairfield Halls by the time it closed for refurbishment in 2016. “Really dark, grim and abused by years of underinvestment.” As head of Brick by Brick, the council’s development company, Lacey has overseen the £42m redevelopment of the complex, which has finally reopened this week, billed as the “Southbank Centre of Croydon”.

The opening programme features Broadway hit The Producers and the UK premiere of the Angela’s Ashes musical, while resident orchestra, London Mozart Players, will be joined by the UK’s premiere black theatre company, Talawa, as well as the inclusive community company, Savvy. Fans of the former Fairfield need not despair: the schedule still features the Sixties Gold 55th Anniversary Tour and An Evening with Lenny Henry.

Regular visitors to this handsome mid-century ocean liner of culture will be pleased to discover that, in the main, the refurbishment has been mercifully light-touch. Much of the foyer clutter that had accrued over the years has been stripped away to reveal a light-flooded place that feels truer to the intentions of the original architects, Robert Atkinson & Partners. Cylindrical columns, previously entombed in layers of woodchip and paint, have been restored to a smart polished black finish, while a tacky undulating ceiling has been torn down to expose a crisp sawtooth soffit.

Majestic new chandeliers dangle above the “sun lounge” mezzanine, remade to match the 1960s designs, while the original typefaces have also been unearthed and used to create bold signage around the building, adding to the mid-century feel without veering into nostalgic kitsch.

The two main auditoria have been brought up to date, with new heating and ventilation, additional stage infrastructure and retractable acoustic blinds in the concert hall for amplified music, while the Ashcroft theatre has been expanded by 50 seats, hitting the 800-seat sweet spot to attract more touring productions. The original red velvet flip-down seats have been kept in both venues, selectively refurbished and replaced (although some still look a little tatty), complete with their perforated wooden undersides to help the acoustics.

Meanwhile, an underused gallery space has been converted into two studios, further expanding the kind of productions the venue can host. As Magnus Wills of Mica Architects puts it: “Now you’ll be able to have Stormzy, Rachmaninoff and Angela’s Ashes all happening at once.” There’ll be free lunchtime concerts in the foyer to boot.

Much of the four-year project has been a process of invisible mending, and some locals will no doubt wonder where the many millions have been spent. Asbestos removal swallowed a huge chunk, as did the surgical insertion of new mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, while the usual unpredictable complexities of refurbishing a 50-year-old structure saw the budget increase by £11m along the way.

In some places, it feels as if the architects have been a bit too keen to eradicate the quaint, cosy character of the place in the pursuit of a clean, stripped-back look. Cork tiled floors in the concert hall have been replaced with drab grey lino, while the warm red carpets are also now a municipal grey, making the corridors feel distinctly office-like. It remains to be seen how well a new glass box addition will perform, facing on to what will be a new public space to the north. It was originally imagined as a restaurant, but is now slated to be more rehearsal and studio space – one of several changes to the original scheme since the operator, BH Live, came on board.

If there are a few hiccups in what is otherwise an impressive renovation, this is perhaps to be expected, given the project is the first major foray into uncharted waters for the council’s own development company. Formally established in 2016 as an entrepreneurial response to central government-imposed austerity, Brick by Brick primarily focuses on housing delivery, building homes on council-owned land, around half for sale and half for affordable rent, the former to subsidise the latter. In order to fund the redevelopment of Fairfield Halls, at a time when the council’s budget has been slashed by 75% since 2010, Brick by Brick is planning to build 430 homes next door, mostly for private sale, in buildings ranging from mansion blocks to a 30-storey tower.

“Brick by Brick was set up in response to the fact that Croydon had been taken for a ride by the private sector for too long,” says Lacey. He describes how the borough had been subjected to a plague of land trading, whereby developers would apply for planning permission simply to raise the value of their sites, then sell them on. The process would happen again and again, leaving blighted vacant sites and ever-reducing the potential amount of affordable housing that could be delivered. Lacey says Brick by Brick is “a deliberate attempt to pull apart the development system and repackage the individual elements so the council benefits”. By the council effectively acting as the developer, he says, “nowhere along the way does money leak out to the private sector”.

It’s a ballsy model that reflects just how far councils are having to bend their usual practices in order to do things they used to be able to do with direct government funding. To critics, it smacks of the public sector behaving too much like a developer, particularly when 30-storey towers are the byproduct. To Lacey, it is a pragmatic response to desperate times, and a means of ensuring that development value is captured for the public good.

Either way, Fairfield Halls has been saved and revamped, at no additional expense to council coffers, in a climate when it would otherwise most likely have been demolished to make way for more bloated towers – of the kind that are increasingly surrounding it. By any calculation, it’s a win for Croydon.