Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh
It will come to no surprise to anyone that has ever laid eyes on this building that it used to be a church. Originally the New North Free Church, it was converted into this theatre in 1980, but by gosh had it seen some diverse things within its walls before then.
Located in Edinburgh's Old Town, the church came to be during the Disruption of 1843. The minister, Charles John Brown, met with several other evangelical ministers about leaving the Church of Scotland if the state did not stop meddling in church affairs. This was in 1842, just before the Disruption when the church were meeting in a chapel at Brighton Street. You don't have to imagine the outcome, and so the Free Church was established. The newly established church left New North Church in 1843 and first met in an independent chapel by Argyle Square.
The Free congregation returned to Brighton Street in the November of 1843 when the established church congregation returned to St Giles. The remained here until the building was sold in 1846 and then moved to the United Secession Church in Potter row. The New North Free Church was then constructed on the site of Edinburgh's poor house and opened two years later in 1848. By then the church had amassed 650 members and so their own building was sorely needed.
By 1900 the Free Church had combined with the United Presbyterian Church to form the United Free Church. After a series of devastating blows over the years following various deaths of ministers and preachers, we assume little choice was left but to give up their role as a borderline independent church within the area. It wasn't until 1929 that things came full circle as the United Free Church joined the Church of Scotland, meaning that New North Church rejoined the National Church which it broke away from all those years ago.
It wasn't long before the grand union of all these churches meant that there were more religious buildings than there were people in Old Town and so it seems worshipers met at Greyfriars instead or churches within that area. Once the congregation left New North Church, the University of Edinburgh repurposed it as a chaplaincy centre in 1957. They then relocated to a purpose built space in 1975 and so the old church became a store for the university while it was decided what happened to it.
Occasionally, the building was used to house drama productions by the students and as an overspill for the Traverse Thetre during the Edinburgh Fringe. Then the idea was had to convert the space into a thrust stage theatre and the university supported this project and opted to name it in memory of Tyrone Guthrie. This plan fell flat when insufficient funding couldnt be raised and instead the university offered the church to the EUTC (Edinburgh University Theatre Company) who opened the building in January of 1980 as the Bedlam Theatre. The name was in reference to the city Bedlam and not for the connotations of madhouses.
It was originally only a temporary home for the EUTC but they remained. In 2001 it was proposed that they leave the venue so the church could be demolished to make way for a hotel but the EUTC refused and a month later Historic Scotland updated its status so that it could not be demolished. Despite this new protected status, hoteliers were still closing in, excluding Bedlam but proposing the demolition of buildings surrounding the site. These were 18th century buildings that didn't have the needed status to save them, but luckily the council rejected the proposal which in turn meant the theatre could remain as a theatre. Friends of Bedlam formed in 2003 to protect and fund the theatre. They allowed for renovations to be made including the railings which had been taken for scrap during WWII.
Bedlam is now the UK's oldest fully student run theatre and one of the leading venues for Edinburgh being quite popular during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
The building itself is of the Decorated Gothic architecture style. Designed by Thomas Hamilton, the very same man who designed the Burns Monument, the church turned theatre dominates Old Town and with a name like Bedlam cannot avoid drawing attention. It certainly drew ours. We walked past it as part of Bobby's Walking Tour and had to stop to take a photo to remind us to look into it, a place as unique as this was worth researching and we were right!
We can't think of a better way for a church to be repurposed than as a theatre, especially a gothic church with features as dark and heavy as this.
Haunted? Well ghost hunters have recently (back in 2012 onward) investigated here and found it both quiet and full of activity. We didn't go in but if you judge a book by its cover we'd say yes, it looks like somewhere Dracula would stay if he came to Edinburgh over Whitby, but there is no official ghost stories about the site for us to share this time.
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