Nicola here. Sorting out my old photographs the other day, I came across a picture from about five years ago that I had forgotten about. It was the original Georgian Assembly Rooms in the Cornish city of Truro, which I visited back in 2021. Only the façade of the building remains these days but it is a very fine façade indeed, originally built in 1780 when the assembly rooms were the hub of entertainment in the city, hosting splendid balls once a month. The elegant frontage features a series of three Wedgwood plaques representing Thalia, the muse of comedy, the playwright William Shakespeare and the actor David Garrick. This was an allusion to the fact that the ballroom could double up as a theatre; during the 1810 – 1811 season, a theatrical company performed over 70 different plays there. It was also the location for concerts and exhibitions.
These days we are accustomed to having a big variety of different entertainments to choose from but back in the Georgian and Regency period, of course, things were very different, especially for women. The home was the centre of most activity and opportunities for meeting up with family and friends, particularly of the opposite sex, was limited. No wonder that in the provincial towns and cities particularly, the anticipation of the monthly ball gave rise to extreme excitement and the assembly room was the hub of the social universe!
