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LMS Route: Evesham to Birmingham

Camp Hill Station: mrch1425c

Close up showing Camp Hill station's First Class Gentlemen's Room with a MR bench seat with the station's name incorporated on the back support

Close up of image 'mrch1425' showing Camp Hill station's First Class Gentlemen's Room with a standard Midland Railway bench seat with the station's name incorporated on the back support. VR Anderson and HN Twells write in LMS Lineside Part Two, that the lettering in the panel containing the station's name was white whilst the background was blue. The enamel signs are advertising Stephens Ink and the Gaiety Theatre based in Birmingham. A Dr Henry Stephens (1796–1864) was the inventor in 1832 of an indelible "blue-black writing fluid" which was to become famous as Stephens' Ink and was to form the foundation of a successful worldwide company for over 130 years. The writer remembers using the ink at Secondary School in the early 1960s. All school work having to be written using a fountain pen, biros (ballpoint pens) being banned. The theatre was located at 88-90 Coleshill Street, and opened in 1886 after extensive alterations and improvements. It was, for a time, run by Charles Barnard, who owned theatres and music halls in north Kent. At this time it had (surprisingly) a temperance bar. The 1897 rebuild within the brick shell of the old building was on fully theatrical lines with horseshoe tiers, elaborate plasterwork and domed boxes. In 1920 it reopened as a cinema. In September 1936 part of the gallery fell in after an explosion in the operating box. The new Gaiety opened in 1938. It closed in 1969 and was demolished the following year.

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