HEWITT'S HISTORY FILES

If anything, the mystery has deepened with the latest little discovery Aldwick-based theatre historian Mike Sell has made.

Mike, a long-term student of Matcham, architect of the King's Theatre in Southsea has come across an old Bognor Post interview with Briggs from 1950.

What Briggs has to say makes the rift with Matcham, if indeed there was one, all the more impenetrable.

" Matcham had an engineer called Robert Griggs, with whom he had a rather interesting relationship," Mike explains.

Briggs was the man who invented the 'panic bolt', the push-down bar which opens many theatre exits and clearly he worked closely with Matcham, a man who had built around 120 new theatres and rebuilt perhaps another 40.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette July 4