Almost at the summit...

This is the view from the window of the lighting box on one balcony across to the sound box on the other. There are just two seating platforms to be fixed in place before we can show you the view from what will be the back row of the auditorium, albeit without the seats. Suffice it to say, however, that as a significant number of patrons will now be sitting above stage level, choreographers will be able to indulge in more Busby Berkley-style dance routines and lighting designers will be able to project pretty patterns on the floor (that’ll keep Alex Lewer happy at least). I suspect that, from row G backwards, it may feel a bit like sitting in the dress circle at the Everyman while remaining close to the stage.

One or two readers of the blog have said they can’t quite make out from the photos the height of each row, so hopefully this close-up will help. This pillar was located alongside the old row G, which was the back row of the front section, and the level of the old floor at this point is clearly shown where the paint changes from brown to red. The lower of the two steps shown in the photo will be the new row E, the front row of the rear section. The higher of the two steps will be the new row F. Don’t forget, there will also be a riser between the two rows – you won’t actually be walking up 13-inch treads!

And it was gone...

No sooner had it appeared than it was gone again. Apart from a brief glimpse if you stand at the rear of the auditorium, the pool is now covered over once more, as the guys cracked on yesterday and laid a great deal of the new floor. The photo (left) shows some of the platforms on which the seats will be fixed and gives a good idea of how greatly improved the visibility will be over the heads of the people in front. And if you are worried at just how high each step appears to be, fret not – a further set of shallower step platforms have yet to be installed between each of the seating platforms.

The seating capacity of the previous auditorium was 230 and, to ensure better comfort and visibility, this is being reduced by over 40 seats (although row A will be permanently in use and not require removal when the orchestra pit or apron stage is required). A little piece of research has revealed that in the 1950s, they somehow crammed a total of 272 seats into this same space! The seats must have been much narrower and leg room must have been minimal. The seating plan from the time shows that each row had as many as 20 seats in it, with no central aisle and two seats the other side of the existing pillars, resulting in very narrow aisles at either end (and presumably very poor visibility of the stage). There was also one row at the rear of the auditorium that was only available for purchase on the night and one raised section of 30 seats at the very back.

Finally, an apology. There were actually TWO winners of the recent competition, as Phil Hopkins also guessed the correct answer of 648 bolts. Apologies to Phil, and a bottle of wine is on its way to him, too!

Another rare find...

We were all convinced that, once the old flooring was removed, there would be no more interesting discoveries to be made. Not so, according to yesterday’s Gloucestershire Echo where, on page 17, you will have seen the headline: “Hidden treasurers exposed by work” – directly under which was a picture of me, sat in the pool, looking for all the world like I’d been stuck down there since 1945 until rescued by the refurbishment. The caption under the photo read: “Rare find: box office manager Paul Scott.” Which is a bit rich, if you think how many hours I spend down this place. I’m not sure which I’d rather be: a ‘hidden treasure’ or a ‘rare find’.

And no, that isn’t the next competition.

But speaking of which, it’s time to reveal that the actual number of bolts involved in connecting the joists and steels will be 652. I’m pleased to say we had a lot of entries – a surprising number of people guessing 672 and 720 for some reason – and that the winner, with a very close guess of 648, is Liz Maisey. A bottle of wine will be delivered in due course.

Aside from that, what’s actually going on in the auditorium? Well, we can report that some of the said 652 bolts have already been used as the joists in the lower section of the new floor (nearest the stage) have all been bolted into place. Parts of the floor have also been laid.

The floor is also down at the rear of the auditorium underneath the steels. In the photograph on the right you can see where the walls of the corridor will be (note the wooden edging), the openings for the doors to the pool and store on either side, and a recess for a radiator.

Competition time...

Yesterday, yours truly and Andy Powell, the managing director of Spacetailors, the principal contractors for the project, had to wear hard hats and fluorescent jackets to enter the auditorium and have pictures taken in and around the pool for use in the Echo over the next few days. In addition to stills, the photographer took some live film which may end up on the Echo website to allow you to take a guided tour of the place. Keep your eyes on the paper and on http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/

To mark the end (almost) of the fourth week of the project, we have a small competition. You thought I was joking yesterday, didn't you? Referring back to an earlier posting on the blog, the question is: how many bolts will Craig have to use to connect the joists to the steels? And to give you a slightly improved chance, the answer is somewhere between 500 and 800.

There is a bottle of wine on offer to the person who gets closest to the correct answer or two bottles if they manage to guess it spot on. Answers should be emailed by 8pm on Tuesday 27 May to boxoffice.playhouse@virgin.net and the winner will be announced here on Wednesday morning, which - due to the bank holiday weekend - will be the first posting next week.

And for those of you concerned about the times some of these entries seem to be posted at, I don't really live down here, or think about the theatre in the middle of the night - unless there is very heavy rain or I have nightmares about a certain musical production from 2006. I just haven't found out how to make this package work in 'proper' time yet!

Yet more unseen Playhouse...

With the rear steels now in place in the auditorium, it is easier to see where the new front of house corridor is going to be. This photo is taken from the bar side of the theatre looking towards the foyer. To the left of this corridor will be a storeroom (and the shower) and, to the right, an access via door and stairs into the pool and furniture store. Fortunately, this will not be as low or as narrow as the tunnels found a few feet beneath! You do know about the tunnels, I assume?

This is an area of The Playhouse that few people have seen, although Craig and Scott ventured down here recently to see for themselves the construction of the building and the swimming pool in particular. Structural engineers have bored holes to ensure the pool floor can take the weight of the steels but Craig, being the conscientious site manager he is, likes to know every inch of a building he’s working on.

There is a series of brick tunnels below ground floor level that date back to the very early days of the building. One tunnel that runs all the way from the cellar to underneath the box office and boiler house, and while you have to crawl on all fours at the cellar end you emerge into a large, high chamber at the other. In this chamber there is still the lower part of an enormous chimney that dates back to the early-1800s and the medicinal baths and salts manufactory. This chimney, only capped at roof height in 1984, is clearly visible in a copy of an 1826 engraving we have in the theatre.

Another area of The Playhouse that few people have seen is the new front of house kitchen, replaced due to the floods. There is a great deal more storage space and anyone who has ever served coffee through that hatch will agree that this is a great improvement on the old one.

Make sure to check the blog tomorrow, as there will be a small competition for the bank holiday weekend with a bottle or two on offer!

No messing at the back...

Today’s photo gives you a better idea of the height of the new rake (and if you haven’t already discovered, you can click on the images to enlarge them so you can see things more clearly). The previous raked floor went to a height half way up the shower door – now the most infamous shower since Psycho based on the amount of talk about it - roughly where the steel in the centre of the picture cuts across it. Now look up. There are two steels at the rear of the curved wall, the furthest being slightly harder to see because the metal and the wall are both red. This is where row P is going to be! From the stage, this seems very high, but part of this is an optical illusion because your eye is drawn to the floor of the pool, rather than where ground floor level will be – not to mention that the rear rake starts much nearer the stage than the old one did.

What are all those holes for..?

A few more changes have taken place since yesterday morning. More of the brick pillars from the central section of the pool have been removed and the first of the rising steels has been put in place, giving some idea of the huge difference between the old rake and the new one in terms of providing visibility over the heads of the rows in front. We should get a really good idea of the overall structure this time tomorrow. The time consuming bit will come once the steel framework is finished. Each of the crosspieces holds the joists for the new floor. These will all need to be bolted in place – not just a couple of bolts, for as the photo shows, there are eight boltholes at every junction!

Meanwhile, after two rather trying hours of working out how to do it, the new seating plan has been installed on the box office computer and fully tested ready to start selling tickets in June. The wooden screen in the front of house lounge is being lovingly restored following its dip in the floodwaters and the new kitchen is being plumbed in. The repairs to the cellar have also been finished, so we shall soon be receiving another visit from Robin Shapero to seal up the hatch and make the theatre watertight.

More metalwork...

It was a good thing that John Cogzell and his team of helpers did such an excellent job of tidying up the scenery workshop a few weeks back, as it is now fairly full of lengths of wood, sheets of plasterboard and bales of insulation material. There was another large delivery of wood first thing this morning, swiftly followed by a second trailer carrying steels, which are now being erected into a fitted framework by two guys and a minature crane.

The photo on the left helps explain where certain features will be in the new auditorium. The blue plasterboards (top centre) are part of the new walls. At the right end of this wall, where it meets one of the red pillars, there will be a set of double doors with a matching pair on the opposite side. At the far left end of this wall, at the top of the picture, you can see a gap with a view through to the electric cupboard. This is where the front of house corridor – which has also acquired an alternative name that I refuse to mention in print – will be, running underneath the raised seating and on top of the remainder of the 1945 floor which is clearly visible in the photo.

And for those of you who are following this saga intently, we have clarified the position on those metal rings around the edge of the pool. An old photo has proved that these did indeed provide a support for swimmers but in the form of a metal handrail rather than a rope.

All change...

The view coming down Bath Road this morning was slightly different. For the first time in just over two weeks, there was no skip obscuring the workshop doors. Instead, there was a trailer bearing the steels that will support the new floor, each marked to show its place in the structure. They were taken through the workshop onto the stage and then placed almost ‘in situ’.

The view coming into the auditorium this morning was enormously different. For the first time in just over sixty years, you can see half a swimming pool, although at the moment it looks rather like an Ancient Roman under-floor heating system. This is as much of the pool as we are going to see, as the rear section – or, to give it its technical term, the shallow end – is still boarded over and will remain so. A new covering will be laid on top of this floor, still structurally in excellent condition, and this is where the new front of house corridor will be. The only other visible change to the pool before it starts being covered over again will be the removal of the brick pillars that the steels are effectively replacing.

We have, surprisingly, also found some more items of historical interest. There are a series of small metal rings - you can just make one out immediately above the brick pillar (left) - at what would have been water level and the presumption is that these would have been to fix a rope around the edge of the pool for swimmers to hold on to.

Are we nearly there yet...?

This is possibly the most frequently asked question of the last few days. There seems to be great anticipation and excitement over what lies beneath. And I didn’t say the floor was definitely coming out on Monday. I merely asked the question. And the answer to that question was ‘no’.

Last night, however, with the raking completely gone (part of it has been used, incidentally, to make a dog kennel during lunch breaks) and the balcony ceilings almost finished, the first few floorboards were pulled up to reveal this glimpse of the swimming pool. Of course, many members have been in the pool through its use as a furniture store, but no one has seen it empty and exposed from the ground floor since World War II.

We won’t see the pool in its entirety – the deep end is under the stage, which is not being touched in any way – but around two-thirds of it will be completely uncovered, with most of the supporting brick pillars also removed. Sadly, we can’t give guided tours, but we will be ensuring photographs are taken (subject to the usual health and safety certificates).

The intention today is to remove around half of the floor, as part of it will need to remain in place to enable the steels to be lowered into the pool ready to begin construction of the new floor, rake and corridor. Meanwhile, in the other side of the complex, there is just a small amount of plastering, painting and fixing to do to complete the flood repair works.

Light, sound and water...

With the majority of the overhead ceiling work near completion, attention has shifted to the two balconies. Both balconies have sloping ceilings that, as with the main roof area, need new insulating boards and then painting. The old sound box on the stage left balcony has been demolished and work has commenced on building a new improved version with, for the first time, a matching lighting box on the opposite balcony. These boxes will have some degree of soundproofing, so that the technical guys can exchange lighting and sound cues and, during those lulls when no effects are required, discuss how much better so-and-so is acting/singing/dancing this evening – or not, as the case may be – without the audience hearing a word. As long as they don’t SHOUT, that is.

The other work being carried out today is the draining of the heating system to allow four radiators to be disconnected and moved. Two of the radiators on the walls are being shifted approximately two feet towards the stage to allow for the new pairs of auditorium doors, while the other radiators – previously located at the rear of the seating – can be raised some seven feet in height up the rear wall to the level of the new back row. A new radiator of identical style will also be placed in a recess in the new front of house corridor.

Site manager Craig Ingham tells me that the steels for the new floor are due to arrive on Thursday and these will be brought into the theatre via the workshop double doors (with some traffic control needed, as there are some quite lengthy steels involved). Does this mean that the 1945 wooden floor will start coming out on Monday, revealing the pool?

Week two...

There is less visible change to report on since the end of last week, although there are still plenty of workers in the building and lots going on. In the auditorium, all the old raking has now been removed and most of the ceiling has now been insulated and replaced. There are three scaffolding towers roaming around and these will be used to paint the ceilings (in Playhouse Black) very shortly. As soon as that has been achieved, then the wooden floor that covers the swimming pool will be removed along with the supporting brick pillars to enable the new floor to be constructed.

In the club side of the building, the decorators are putting finishing touches to everywhere that needed painting as a result of the flooding last summer. The committee room and corridor look better than they ever have and the dressing rooms and corridors are amazingly bright and clean (and will stay that way, actors, or I shall be standing over you with brushes and paint before I let you out after a show). At the moment, the front of house kitchen looks a bit like a bomb has hit it - the old cabinets have been removed, the walls plastered, skimmed and painted - but by the end of next week, it, too will look better than it has in years.

The Layman mystery...

I wasn’t going to add another entry until next week, what with building work about to cease for the bank holiday, but I’ve received several requests for more details about the suicide of one of Nelson’s comrades referred to in an earlier posting.

Captain William Layman served with Admiral Nelson on several occasions but faced two court martials after running two of Nelson’s ships aground, effectively ending his career. Yet Nelson thought extremely highly of Layman, going so far as to write to the Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty that he was a greater loss to the nation than the loss of a ship. Unfortunately, Nelson was killed at Trafalgar soon afterwards and the Commissioner lost his position, so there was no second chance for Layman.

In 1825, Layman decided to rent a house in fashionable Cheltenham and it was here that he started to show signs of mental instability. He took to drinking rainwater and refused to return to London where he felt sure he would be poisoned if he ate anything. Some six months later, he apparently committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor.

Where does The Playhouse possibly fit in? A report on Layman’s inquest carried in The Times on 27 May 1826 stated that the suicide took place in one of Cheltenham’s public baths. There were two public baths in Cheltenham at that time – Freeman’s Baths, at 61 High Street, and Thompson’s Montpellier Baths in Bath Road (now The Playhouse). Sadly, the inquest records, which should have specified at which baths the suicide took place, have been lost, but the case is certainly stronger for his death occurring here.

Firstly, Freeman’s Baths had been set up in 1788 but Thompson’s, opening in 1809, was the much more fashionable and popular premises, situated as it was on the edge of the Montpellier Estate and Gardens. It seems likely that someone of Captain Layman’s position would have frequented the grander establishment. Secondly, a parcel left by Layman at the scene of his death contained a book by the chemist Mr Accum, who was an authority on salts and spa waters. I have found references to Accum being connected in some way with Thompson’s Salts Laboratory, which was also based at the baths here.

More research is required and is ongoing!

Behind the door...

Most people, unless they were really observant, have probably never noticed the door at the very back of the auditorium. You could just see the very top of it, poking out above the backs of the seats in Row R, and we do have an old photograph of the swimming pool clearing showing said door. I’d always assumed it was just a cupboard, as there was obviously nowhere for it to lead to. Today, with the final piece of raking removed from the rear of the auditorium, we were able to open the door and discover the fascinating truth.

It’s a shower and in incredible condition – even the showerhead and tap are still there! There’s a small ledge seat and the tiling appears to match those in the pool, so one assumes this is an original feature from the 1898 incarnation of the building. It’s possible some of the longest-serving (I nearly said older) members who were around when the raking was installed remember this feature but most of us were unaware of its existence.

Ironically, a shower is something most of the performers here have always wanted. This area will be protected and incorporated into the small store that is being created behind the new corridor linking the foyer to the lounge bar, as opposed to being covered up and never seen again.