Shepherd's Bush Empire

Stand on the edge of Shepherd's Bush Green for a moment. Buses sigh at the stops, and the traffic loops around the triangle of grass. Then look across at the long red-brick front with its pale stone trim. On a gig night a queue curls along the pavement, people stamp their feet against the cold, and the air smells faintly of chips and rain. This is the Shepherd's Bush Empire. Few buildings in London have changed their job so often while keeping their face.

The Empire opened in 1903 as a music hall. Music hall was the great popular entertainment of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Think of a variety show: comic singers, acrobats, magicians, sentimental ballads, and a crowd that sang along and heckled freely. Working Londoners came here for a cheap, loud night out. Halls like this one stood in nearly every district, and each one tried to look grander than the hall down the road.

The man who designed it was Frank Matcham. If you have seen the London Coliseum or the London Palladium, you have seen his work. Matcham was the leading theatre architect of his age. He was known for rich plasterwork, sweeping balconies, and rooms where almost every seat felt close to the stage. He designed many theatres across Britain, and he worked fast. His buildings were made to feel like a treat the moment you walked in.

So picture the early audiences here. Gaslight and early electric light on gilded plaster. Men in caps and women in their best hats, packed into the upper tiers. Many famous variety performers worked this circuit of halls, moving from suburb to suburb each week. A performer might play several halls on the same night, rushing between them by cab. The Empire was one stop on that busy, sweaty, cheerful map of London entertainment.

Here is the first surprise. For most of the second half of the twentieth century, this was not really a theatre for live audiences paying at the door. In the 1950s the BBC took it over. The corporation renamed it the BBC Television Theatre. Its studios at nearby White City were close by, and an old music hall was a perfect room for shows that needed a live audience laughing on cue.

For decades, the stage you can see tonight was a television set. Light entertainment programmes were recorded here, from children's shows to chat shows. In the late 1980s, the Irish broadcaster Terry Wogan hosted his long-running evening chat show from this building. Millions of viewers watched this stage from their sofas without ever knowing its music hall past. The audience seats became a studio crowd, and the balconies held cameras and lighting rigs.

Think about what that means for the building. Television needs cables, gantries, control rooms, and a lot of electricity. Some of the original interior was changed or covered during those years. So when you go inside, you see a mix. There are traces of the Edwardian theatre, and there are practical layers added for broadcasting and later for rock concerts. The building shows its history in these patches and repairs.

The BBC left in the early 1990s. For a short time the future of the Empire was uncertain. Many old halls in London were demolished in the twentieth century, turned into bingo halls, or left to decay. This one was lucky. In the mid-1990s it reopened as a live music venue. The building is now protected as a listed building, which means its character is officially recognised and cannot simply be torn down.

Here is the second surprise. Performers often love this room more than much bigger arenas. It holds roughly two thousand people, yet it feels intimate. Matcham's design keeps the stage close. From the upper balcony you look almost straight down onto the performers. Over the years, internationally famous artists have chosen to play here for a smaller, more personal show. The sound of a crowd singing along still fills the room, just as it did in the music hall days.

Now look at the outside again. The façade faces the green directly, built to catch the eye of anyone crossing the common. Notice the stone details against the red brick, and the way the frontage is designed to look like a palace for ordinary people. That was the whole idea of the variety theatre. A night at the Empire was meant to feel like luxury, even if you only paid for the cheapest seat in the gods, the highest balcony.

The neighbourhood around you has changed just as much as the building. Shepherd's Bush grew quickly in the late nineteenth century as railways and trams reached west London. Locals say the area's name comes from shepherds who once rested their flocks on this common on the way into the city. That is a popular explanation, not a certain one. Today the green is surrounded by shops, cafés, and a huge shopping centre to the west.

If you come for a concert, the experience follows a familiar rhythm. The doors open, the crowd flows up the stairs, and the bars fill. The standing floor at the front is for people who want to be close and loud. The seated and standing balconies above suit people who want a clearer view. Many regulars have strong opinions about which level is best. The truth is that each tier gives a different version of the same night.

As you stand here, try to hold all three lives of this building in your mind. Variety performers telling jokes under gaslight. Television cameras rolling for a studio audience. A guitarist turning up the volume for a packed floor. The same walls have contained all of it. Very few buildings in London have been reinvented so completely while still doing the same basic job, which is to gather people together and entertain them.

Before you walk away, look up once more at the frontage, and then out across the green. Listen to the buses, the voices, perhaps a soundcheck leaking through the doors. More than a century ago, people crossed this same patch of grass on their way to a night out. They were looking for noise, laughter, and a few hours of escape. On many evenings, people still arrive here for exactly the same reasons.