Qualla: Liverpool Empire Theatre

Liverpool Empire Theatre: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Bradley, CC BY 3.0. In 1976, midway through the extended instrumental in "Death Trip," Steve Harley walked too close to the edge of the Liverpool Empire stage and tipped over into the orchestra pit. He broke three ribs on the way down. He climbed back up and finished the song as if nothing had happened. The rest of the tour had to be cancelled. That kind of evening is what the Empire Theatre on Lime Street has been hosting since 1925, when it opened as the second theatre on this corner of Liverpool — the first having stood here from 1866 until it was demolished the year before. With 2,348 seats stacked in the largest two-tier auditorium in the United Kingdom, the Empire is the kind of Victorian-scale palace that the city built in its imperial pomp and then somehow never demolished, even when the cinemas next door were coming down all around it.

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Image: John Bradley | CC BY 3.0

Liverpool Empire Theatre: The Royal Alexandra and Its Successor

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Boing! said Zebedee, CC BY-SA 3.0. There has been a theatre on this corner since 15 October 1866, when the New Prince of Wales Theatre and Opera House opened with what was then the largest auditorium in Liverpool. Nine months later, in July 1867, it changed its name to the Royal Alexandra in honour of the new Prin...

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Image: Boing! said Zebedee | CC BY-SA 3.0

Liverpool Empire Theatre: Milburn and Moss Empires

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Edkins, CC BY-SA 3.0. The brothers W. and T. R. Milburn designed the new Empire for Moss Empires, the powerful music-hall chain that operated theatres across Britain. They built it on a steel frame faced in Portland stone, in a free Neoclassical style — five bays across the front, the central three ri...

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Image: Keith Edkins | CC BY-SA 3.0

Liverpool Empire Theatre: The Quarrymen Come Home

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Bradley, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1957 a local schoolboy skiffle group called the Quarrymen, fronted by a 16-year-old John Lennon, appeared at the Empire. Nobody noticed them much. They came back in 1959 calling themselves Johnny and the Moondogs, and again nobody noticed them much. They returned a third time ...

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Image: John Bradley | CC BY-SA 3.0

Liverpool Empire Theatre: Two Ghosts and a Royal Command

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Liz Koravos, CC BY-SA 4.0. Every Victorian theatre worth visiting has its ghost story, and the Empire keeps two. The first is Len, a former scenic painter who is said to walk the upper levels and occasionally be glimpsed by stagehands during late get-outs. The second is a girl of about nine or ten in Victo...

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Image: Liz Koravos | CC BY-SA 4.0