Gorleston Theatre Lottery funding hopes

Repairs and improvements to Gorleston's Pavilion Theatre need to be tackled before it reaches a crucial tipping point where the rate of decline accelerates, it was warned this week.

Repairs and improvements to Gorleston's Pavilion Theatre need to be tackled before it reaches a crucial tipping point where the rate of decline accelerates, it was warned this week.

Although borough conservation officer Darren Barker said much-needed work on the Grade II listed building was not quite that urgent yet, he was keen to crack on with a lottery bid that would fast-track it out of trouble.

In the next few weeks it is hoped a survey will come up with a shopping list of jobs that need to be done.

“The application is not the tricky bit,” Mr Barker, said, adding: “it is all the supporting information. There has been a huge draw on lottery funding and some of it has gone to the Olympics so they have raised the bar and are insisting that all applications are really robust.”

He said that although ultimately it was up to the theatre's operators to submit the heritage lottery bid the council would do all it could to help them put it together.

Designed by the eminent JW Cockrill, who also masterminded the Hippodrome Circus and Art College the 1901 Edwardian theatre is well run and well-supported.

Still impressive today as it stares out to sea it would have been truly opulent in the eyes of its original audience.