Row over oldest pub theatre (King's Head vs Pentameters): Are they rewriting the script?

Published: 11 February 2010
by JOSH LOEB

IT’S a story which opens in 1970. Or maybe 1968. Or perhaps earlier, depending on which theatre historian you ask.

The New Journal has learned that two books are in production which make the same claim: to have found the oldest theatre pub in London.

While the founder of the Pentameters in Hampstead lays claim to that revered title, historians of the King’s Head Theatre in Islington say the same thing about their favourite playhouse. 

In fact the Upper Street theatre says it was “the first pub theatre founded in England, since the days of Shakespeare”. 

Pentameters’ Leonie Scott-Matthews is due to a publish a history of the theatre which she says began life in 1968, staging “proper plays” the following year at first in the basement of the Freemason’s Arms in Downshire Hill.

“I started the concept of Pentameters before the King’s Head,” she said. 

“It started on August 7 1968 in a skittle alley in the basement of the Freemason’s Arms.”

But Ms Scott-Matthews added: “It’s very difficult to claim that one is the first of anything because you always find there is something older. There were the old music halls for example. 

“I never think it is a good idea to claim you are the oldest for the sake of publicity because you are claiming something that isn’t entirely true.”

The disagreement over which came first, the Pentameters or the King’s Head, has come  to light after news that historian Mary Cosh is working on a history of the contender from Islington.

She says its founder Dan Crawford kicked off the pub theatre craze before anyone else when he built the venue in 1970. 

Ms Cosh said: “He was stuck in London and had the bright idea but only so many dollars. He came across the King’s Head pub and rescued it. To my knowledge there were no others.”  Mr Crawford died in 2005 after building the theatre into one of the capital’s most celebrated fringe theatres.

The Victoria and Albert Museum theatre archive’s earliest programme from Pentameters dates from 1974. Its records for the King’s Head date from 1970, but an archivist said: “We cannot be sure whether the King’s Head is the first pub theatre.”

Director John Dunne, who worked at the King’s Head in the 1990s, said: “Sometimes the perception is more important than the actuality. Pentameters may pre-date the King’s Head but the King’s Head is generally acknowledged as the first.” 

London witnessed an explosion of fringe venues after censorship was abolished in the 1960s. Prior to the 1968 Theatre Act, onstage blasphemy and nudity were banned and the Lord Chamberlain – an office of the Royal household – vetted scripts. 

Kentish Town-based critic Howard Loxton said: “There were lots of people around who desperately wanted to put on theatre. 

“That might have been to do with the fact that people were more easily able to live on the dole.”