Demolished in 1984, its site now a corner of Morrison’s car park, the Britannia Hall in Market Street was one of Keighley’s most impressive Victorian buildings.

Memories of its declining years have tended to obscure its varied historical significance.

Built by the New Britannia Lodge of Oddfellows in 1853, it was soon being utilised by members of Keighley Thespian Society, who performed mainly melodramas there but who also tackled Hamlet.

One Joseph Bainton ran a homely music hall there, said to have encouraged custom by giving free cigars to the first 50 patrons and throwing mousetraps and tin whistles into the audience.

He was followed in 1873 by Abraham Kershaw, a piano-tuner from Milnesbridge, near Huddersfield, who would go on to found Keighley’s original five-storey wooden Queen’s Theatre and Opera House in 1880.

Kershaw’s Varieties at the Britannia Hall featured such turns as Miss Marian Constance’s Great Transformation Skipping Rope Dances; Alexander Day, the only one-armed solo cornet player in the profession, and Blitz, the wondrous plate expert and manipulator and spiral plate and pyramid ascensionist! Dan Leno is thought to have performed there early in his career.

Subsequently, the Britannia Hall served as a Salvation Army Citadel, held dances before and during the Second World War, and housed a fruit and potato warehouse and a bookmaker, as well as a social and snooker club.

The photograph has been supplied by Kevin Seaton, of Shann Lane, Keighley.