ON STAGE
the doors were relocated to the front-of- house corridor, nobody locked them for fear of being haunted by the ghost. One manager tried during Covid only to find a slight misalignment in their heights, so they couldn’t be locked. Was this a mistake, or the intervention of a supernatural force? As far as we know, they haven’t been locked since! The theatre’s original ethos also remains: to broaden access to student and community theatre. Once inside, you might just hear the echoes of laughter from days gone by, when Fry and Laurie, Mitchell and Webb, and Mel and Sue all cut their comedy cloth in the Cambridge Footlights here. You might hear the laughter from days gone by
BREAK THE FOURTH WALL Whether steeped in a long cultural history like the ADC Theatre (above) or a newer arts venue like Saffron Hall’s concert space (below), both are intertwined with their communities
The acoustics are so precise at Saffron Hall that, during an early demonstration, an engineer dropped a small object on stage – and the entire audience could hear it! Did you know?
The sound of music A fanfare from the Master of the Queen’s Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, thrust Saffron Hall’s new concert space onto the international stage in 2013. Since then, it has attracted more than 30,000 prestigious artists to perform there, including the likes of Nicola Benedetti, Jess Gillam, Maxim Vengerov, Clare Teal and Courtney Pine, and has two resident orchestras – the London Philharmonic and Britten Sinfonia. Here, the 740-seat auditorium’s adjustable acoustics can shift you from the crystal-clear speech of a drama to full orchestral richness in a crescendo – but even more remarkable is that the hall is in the middle of an Essex school.
school, which came from an anonymous local donor with a passion for music. “World-class art and outstanding music education should be accessible to everybody and this was the motivation behind Saffron Hall,” says Angela Dixon MBE, chief executive of Saffron Music Trust. “Twelve years on, the effect of having the hall in this location within a school continues to grow and reach into the communities locally and regionally.” A cultural hub with a strong local foundation, the hall’s social impact projects include Together in Sound, a pioneering music therapy programme in partnership with Anglia Ruskin University, bringing music to those living with dementia and their carers.
When not hosting exams or daily assemblies, by night Saffron Walden County High School comes alive to the sounds of classical, jazz, folk, theatre and opera, alongside dance and laughs aplenty from its stand-up comedy shows. Sleek, tiered seating with excellent sightlines helps when spotting the ice cream usher during the interval (a British theatre institution). For the fun fact lovers among you, the venue has sold more than 42,000 pots of the stuff! Conceived as a concert hall rather than an adapted space, and having garnered architectural acclaim as a dual- purpose venue, Saffron Hall cost just over £9 million to build thanks to the largest-ever private donation to a state
CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK MAY 2026 11
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