An enduring family affair
Joël Lacey talks to the Dunne family about their work at the Shelley Theatre
Published in September ’18
Above How the combined Shelley Theatre and medical centre looks today
The linkage between theatre and health is not necessarily an obvious one, but for the Dunne family, who have put their collective heart and soul into Boscombe’s Shelley Theatre, it is a very strong one. Jon, in his role as property director of a company that builds medical centres, has, as it were, a bit of form in this regard.
When his company was looking to find a site for a new medical centre in Sturminster Newton, their purchase of the livestock market caused the directors to think that they should be building more than just a medical centre. He recalls: ‘Having bought the livestock market, we went to planning with the community and gave them the land for the Exchange, including a theatre, which they built alongside the medical centre. It occurred to us then that a theatre adds a huge amount of health benefits to a community, and deals with a range of issues which a medical centre alone can’t. Putting the two together, a theatre with a medical centre next to it, has a certain synergy which isn’t obvious.’
It was a synergy that came to the fore in a rather different way when Jon’s company was looking for a new centre for the medical practice in Boscombe, at Adeline Road. As Jon recalls, ‘The surgery was trying to find a new site within their catchment area to serve the people of Boscombe, but it was proving problematic and then we saw…’
Jon is interrupted simultaneously by wife Nina and daughter Zoë: ‘Hang on, who saw?’
‘…then,’ Jon continues, ‘Nina saw the front page of the Echo and said, “Would Shelley Manor do for the Adeline Road surgery?” Philip Proctor, the architect and one of my co-directors, looked at the building and said: “Actually, the room sizes and everything else will convert and make a very good modern surgery.” We went and saw the doctors and took them round the building with torches – everything was boarded up at the time with water running through it, leaking ceilings, holes in the floor and so on – and if the doctors had turned round and said “You’re having a laugh,” it would all now be flats.’
From left to right: Jon, Nina, Tom and Zoë Dunne
They didn’t, and it isn’t, but rather a medical centre, dispensing chemist and, of course, a community hub in the form of the Shelley Theatre, café bar, conference centre and associated rooms.
Shelley Manor was so called after Sir Percy Shelley, only surviving son of romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, author of Frankenstein. In 1849, Sir Percy and his wife, Jane, Lady Shelley, bought what was re-named Boscombe Manor in order that his mother and wife might live there, rather than the huge, damp and unhealthy Hampshire family pile that Sir Percy had inherited with his baronetcy.
Mary Shelley never did come to live in Boscombe, but Sir Percy and Jane did and in 1856 they built a theatre in the grounds and put on plays for their friends. After a three-year spell away from the Manor, they returned in 1870 and moved the theatre indoors to the Manor itself, where it still is.
The main theatre auditorium set up in recital mode
The theatre may have been there, but it was in a bit of a state. After the Shelleys, the Manor went through various ownerships until it was bought for £37,000 by Bournemouth Corporation in 1938 (and was then known as Grovely Manor, after the school which had occupied it). It was Bournemouth’s civil defence centre during World War 2 – appropriately, as it is the borough’s oldest secular building – then it was used by Bournemouth College of Technology, then Bournemouth and Poole College of Art & Design.
An intimate show in the Pavilion Studio
Nina Dunne explains, ‘We get a lot of people coming in and saying how they used to be students here’, while Jon adds that his sister did her shorthand and typing lessons there. ‘They had boarded everything up – the proscenium arch was blocked with loo doors,’ which it turns out is ironic, as the measure of progress of the Shelley Theatre’s appeal to the public over the thirteen years since Jon’s company bought it can pretty much be traced by the number of loos available to the theatre-going public. Nina again: ‘We’re so proud of our new loos as it’s taken us so long to get them, but that was very, very fortunate, because we had the chairman of the theatre’s trust come to a performance and his wife – this is when we were at the three-loo stage – wanted to go to the loo and turned round to her husband and said: “You’ve got to do something about this,” so he created a “Spend a penny” campaign and we won a grant for £15,000 just for our ladies’ loos, which was possibly the only grant we had up until a little while ago.’
Away from the more prosaic problems, although possibly contributing to them, son Tom is in charge of the food and drink element of the Shelley Theatre. As venue manager, Zoë’s remit includes programming – they are doing predominantly professional theatre and professional performance – and this is where the Shelley is rather different from other community theatre spaces: ‘We have a very different Christmas show planned: a circus that is not your traditional Christmas story but an all-immersive show from venue to venue within the theatre. Fingers crossed, we’re going to have aerialists coming down from the rig and it’s going to be amazing.
Zoë Dunne at the Shelley Theatre’s bar with an early scaffold/trestle table/door bar
‘In terms of future building works, we’re going to be doing our dressing rooms this year. We are also going to be doing some sound insulation so we’ll be able to use one of two rooms directly above the theatre, which is another really useful space. Then we’re getting a new lighting bar and brackets made so we can move the back bar to the middle, and we’re looking at trying to raise money to get some decent LED lighting in there. We also want to get the decking done at the back of the theatre – to have a terrace around the whole of the back of the theatre, upgrade the café/kitchen and then gently build that up as a revenue stream, so that we can afford to do other things as well.’
As Jon says: ‘Sometimes you’ll see in business someone have a massive launch and, for about five seconds, it’s the hottest property around … then it’s over. We’re trying to do exactly the opposite. Some people say, “Ooh, I didn’t know this place was here” and that’s great because we’re just gently growing. If we had too many people in, we just couldn’t handle them.’
The Dunnes muck in wherever they can, but the theatre is directed by a trust and almost all the work is done by volunteers, as Zoë explains: ‘All our films are chosen by our volunteers. They sit through the showreels and then choose what they want to see over the coming season.’
Nina agrees: ‘We’ve got a huge volunteer community and, as well as them doing good for us, it does an awful lot of good for an awful lot of them to get out and mix with other people.’
Although they rely on their volunteers, the management of the venture is a Dunne family affair, as Nina explains: ‘The great thing about Zoë coming in as venue manager, and having Tom running the bar and café, is that when we all get together we hardly ever talk about anything else but the theatre.’ Zoë agrees: ‘It’s taken over our lives.’
The first performance at the reopened Shelley Theatre in 2010. This was before the new, more comfortable seating had been installed.
As well as having their own theatre, Sir Percy and Lady Shelley were important people in Bournemouth and especially Boscombe society. It was they who led the charge to establish a local public dispensary, to provide medical and surgical advice and medicine to the poor. The dispensary was opened to the public in 1859. It lasted in various guises until the 1990s when, as a general hospital, it was finally demolished. It seems almost destiny that the twin planks of the Shelleys’ life in Boscombe and Bournemouth – the theatre and the surgery/dispensing pharmacy – should come full circle and be brought back together in one place to be nurtured by the Dunne family in Shelley Manor.
http://shelleytheatre.co.uk/
