ABSTRACT
I n the early months of 1914 the Royal Victoria Hall stood outwardly much as it had done for the previous twenty-five years. At the far end of the building, on the Waterloo Road, an arched doorway still gave entrance to a Morley College running ‘above, behind and below the stage’. In the tympanum above this door a terra-cotta group of working men, modelled by that master craftsman Tinworth of Doulton's, still surrounded a terra-cotta Samuel Morley growing grimier year by year. At the other end of the building, facing on to the New Cut, the balcony doors of the Vic still offered admission to all who could put down a few pence. Dimly lit, dilapidated and dirty, the whole edifice gave few outward signs of the pulsating life within.
