Fairfield Halls

Fairfield Halls
Fairfield Halls as seen from Queen's Gardens
General information
Type	Concert hall
Architectural style	Modernist
Address	Park Lane, Croydon CR9
Country	United Kingdom
Inaugurated	1962
Client	County Borough of Croydon
Design and construction
Architect	Robert Atkinson and Partners

Fairfield Halls is an arts, entertainment and conference centre located in Croydon, London. It opened in 1962 and contains a concert hall, theatre and gallery. The large concert hall is regularly used for BBC television, radio and orchestral recordings. Fairfield Halls closed for two years for a £30 million redevelopment in July 2016.

Although the venue has been a major venue for professional music, plays, musicals, stand-up comedy and classical music, a significant proportion of Fairfield's programme has been for community events. It was frequently used by local schools as the venue for their annual choral concerts, as well as being regularly used by local music, opera, amateur dramatic and religious organisations. The Concert Hall features a cinema with Croydon's largest cinema screen.

The halls are built on the site of Croydon's historic 'Fair Field' (which hosted a well-known fair up until around 1860), 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. Between 1930 and 1962 the land was home to both a car park and air raid shelters during the war.

The venue was 50 years old in 2012 and an anniversary concert by the London Mozart Players was attended by the Earl of Wessex. A website was also launched to celebrate both the venue's history and to act as an ongoing archive (see below). It contains 2,000 digitised images accessed via text and keyword searches. This makes it one of the largest digitised venue archives in Europe.

The building's concert hall has 1,801 seats (counting the choir stalls), the Ashcroft Theatre has 755, and the Arnhem Gallery is used for standing concerts of up to 400.

Many famous acts have performed at the Fairfield Halls, including The Dubliners, Kenny Rogers, Stevie Wonder, Genesis, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Who, Queen, Morrissey, Status Quo, Chuck Berry, and Petula Clark. Delaney & Bonnie & Friends recorded their live album On Tour with Eric Clapton in the halls, with a band that also featured George Harrison. Rat Scabies and Captain Sensible of the Damned both worked as toilet cleaners at Fairfield Halls, Captain Sensible remarking that he was inspired to take music more seriously after witnessing a T.Rex concert there.Morecambe and Wise's appearance at the halls in 1973 was filmed, the only time that their live stage act was recorded.