At lunchtime today, we were trying to remember the name of the architect for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, important as the work of a female architect, Elisabeth Scott. She was a great-neice of Gilbert Scott and an early student at the AA; won the competition in 1928 (for some reason I remembered the date correctly) in conjunction with Alison Sleigh, a fellow student at the AA, after working for Louis de Soissons and Oliver Hill. I haven’t seen the theatre for a long time, but remember it as grandly civic as a design, slightly Scandinavian in character, with a good relationship to the Avon, and was pleased that it escaped the proposal to demolish it not so long ago.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
It has been altered radically to, in effect, make it a larger version of the Swan Theatre next door (the audience in a horseshoe round the stage) though it lacks the Swan’s intimacy. You should go though the quality of the productions is variable – Greg Doran still resists the idea that the great Shakespearean parts call for the greatest actors.
Alison Sleigh was a New Zealander and became Alison Shepherd in 1928, probably before Elisabeth Scott was declared the winner of the competition.
Yes, marrying J.C. [Jock] Shepherd who worked as part of the triumvirate which won the competition and then set up in practice together. She did the drawings for Summerson’s Georgian London and he took the photographs for the National Buildings Record. Charles