Fairfield Halls

Fairfield Halls is an arts centre in Croydon, London, England and opened in 1962. It contains a concert hall, the Ashcroft Theatre (named after local Peggy Ashcroft), the Arnhem Gallery civic hall (Croydon is twinned with Arnhem) and an art gallery.

The large concert hall is frequently used for BBC recordings. The Halls are the home of the London Mozart Players, whose principal guest conductor is flautist, Sir James Galway. Many famous faces have appeared at the Fairfield Halls, including The Beatles, Family (who recorded the first side of their album, "Anyway" in the halls), The Nice (who recorded their album Five Bridges in the halls), Robert Cray, Status Quo, Chuck Berry, Kenny Rogers, Elkie Brooks, Daniel O'Donnell, Shakin' Stevens, The Sinceros, Hall & Oates, Free, James Last, Bucks Fizz, Judith Durham and Coolio.

It is frequently used by local schools as the venue for their annual choral concerts.

The halls are built on the site of Croydon's historic fair field, and above disused railway cuttings which used to link the main London to Brighton railway to Croydon Central Station in what is now Queen's Gardens.

Fairfield Halls has also been used for British professional wrestling for many years, with various cards having been featured on ITV's "World of Sport" in the 70s and 80s.

The future

Fairfield is run by a self-financing charity. It was in receipt of an operating grant from Croydon Council of nearly £1m up until 2005 when the grant was removed completely due to financial difficulties at the Council. With the removal of the grant the Council no longer has any say in the running or artistic programming of Fairfield and so it now runs completely independently.However Croydon Council, the freeholder of the land, has had various plans to refurbish Fairfield over the years but none of these plans have ever come to fruition. The latest development scheme to fall through involved the development of College Green Next to Fairfield. This was this latest in a long line of grand plans for Croydon to come to nothing.

The long-term commercial viability of the Fairfield was threatened by the local council's proposed development of an 12,500 seater arena on the Croydon Gateway site next to East Croydon Station. The council-backed scheme included a multi-use arena that would target the same income-generating markets that keep Fairfield alive today. On 30 July 2008 the Arena Public Inquiry finally concluded that an Arena was not financially viable. Planning permission and the compulsory purchase of the land were rejected. Croydon Council continues to seek an Arena.

Trivia

Fairfield's Concert Hall was used as a brief location for Robert Langdon's speech for The Da Vinci Code film. You can see it in the first ten minutes of the film where Langdon (Tom Hanks) gives a talk to students about symbols.

External links

* [http://www.fairfield.co.uk/ Official web site]