The Theatre Royal was built in the Barnwell suburb of Cambridge, England, in 1816. It closed later that century but reopened as the Cambridge Festival Theatre from 1926 until 1935. The building, in which part of the interior of the theatre survives, is Grade II* listed. 19th century In the mid-18th century, Cambridge's main source of theatrical performances came from travelling companies, including the Norwich Company of Comedians, that would perform on Stourbridge Common at the Stourbridge Fair for three weeks each autumn. As a result, three theatres were built in Barnwell in succession, but Cambridge lacked a permanent theatre. William Wilkins (1751–1815), a building contractor, was proprietor of a chain of theatres in East Anglia known as the Norwich Theatre Circuit. Wilkins and his son, also William (1778–1839), built a theatre in 1807 at Sun Street, Barnwell. The younger Wilkins, responsible for Downing College and London's National Gallery during his career, designed a new theatre nearby to replace the 1807 building. The building is on the south side of the Newmarket Road in the northeastern Cambridge suburb of Barnwell. Completed in 1816, the theatre was sited outside the boundary of the town owing to prohibition of theatrical entertainment by the University authorities (a 1737 act "for the More Effectual Preventing the Unlawful Playing of Interludes within the Precincts of the Two Universities ..." forbade the performance of all plays and operas within five miles of the town). On his father's death in 1815, Wilkins inherited the leases of the new site and six other theatres – Norwich, Bury St Edmunds, Colchester, Yarmouth, Ipswich and King's Lynn – and continued to run them. Proprietorship passed to his son, W Bushby Wilkins, and a succession of lessees, but the Norwich circuit declined, despite hosting readings by Charles Dickens. The theatre closed in 1878 and became a nonconformist chapel. Cambridge Festival Theatre Terence Gray (1895–1986) leased the building in 1926 and reopened it as the Cambridge Festival Theatre. The alleyway between the street and the building was enclosed to form a foyer. The interior was modernised, with the proscenium arch widened by the removal of the private boxes, and the introduction of electric lighting, a brick cyclorama and an early example of a revolving stage. The theatre was the country's "first permanent indoor performing space to be based on the design of a Greek open-air theatre". The 'Festival' name reflected Grey's intention