Standing on the site now occupied by Brandon House, the Jacobs Well Theatre was opened in 1729 by actor John Hippisley to entertain the visitors of Hotwells. It took its name from the nearby Jacobs's Well, a medieval monument thought to be a mikveh, a type of Jewish ritual bath. The stage space was so small that actors exiting on one side had to walk around the building to re-enter on the other side, often being subject to banter by spectators enjoying this free show. A hole was knocked through a party wall to an adjacent ale house, The Malt Shovel, so that actors, and audience seated on the stage, could obtain refreshments. Admission prices ranged from 1 shilling to 3 shillings, and it was estimated that a full house could earn as much as £80. Of the theatre, Chatterton scathingly wrote: ‘and PLEASURE had a hut’, in ‘Kew Gardens’ (a poem also condescending of the Assembly Rooms). It was one of the earliest purpose-built theatres in the provinces, its repertoire drawn from the London theatre. It established – by its success – a pattern for theatre in Bristol, consisting of a summer of plays with actors from London and Bath, for citizens who believed in culture as well as ‘Virtute and Industria’. Young actors could advance further in the provincial theatre, eg. William Wyatt Dimond, Abraham and Margaret Didieir, Francis Blissett, Charles Murray, Thomas and Margaret Knight. The theatre, suffering competition from the new theatre in King Street, finally closed in 1779. Recalling the venue in 1786 William Meyler, local lyricist, wrote the following elegiac lines:
Close to where Brandon's heights majestic rise,
Your once famed theatre in ruin lies;
There, where decaying walls affright the eye,
And threat distruction to the passers by,
Where moths and spiders fix their dank abode,
Where screams the screech-owl, and where croaks the toad,
Emperors and Kings their gaudy temples built,
And there whole armies oft their blood have spilt;
There triumph'd Tamerlane, there Romeo sigh'd.
There Lear grew mad — there Richard raved and died;
There bright Thalia, mirth Inspiring maid,
Taught ravish'd Bristol ev'n to slight her trade;
But all those charms are fled, no perfum'd beau
There, in green box, shall lounge an hour or so;
No thin, wan maid, from Clifton or the Wells,
Wrapt in the drama, there her grief dispels;
Nor honest Jack, such wafted to our port,
In comer snug, to Sally pays his court,
Whence steering homeward by the moonlight scene,
Tinges on Brandon's hill her gown with green;
By Time, rude leveller of small and great,
Troy's Towers and Jacob's Well have shared one fate!
