THE STORY OF HOW THE ANVIL WAS BORN
The Anvil is a Concert Hall, theatre and exhibition / sports arena situated in the heart of Basingstoke, next to the town centre and a stone’s throw from the railway station. Most people probably take it for granted that it is there. But the story of how it came into being is one that affected me deeply and I think it needs to be told.
The start
The story of the Anvil starts in May 1991 when I was re-elected to Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council after a year off it.
To my surprise, I was made Leader again. Within a month, a train of events started that would plunge me into the most intense period of political activity that I have ever experienced.
Introducing Hero Number 1
In June, a month after being re-elected, David Pitt called me at work: could I please come to a meeting at lunchtime? David was the Borough Council’s Director of Finance and is an unsung hero of the Anvil story.
David’s offices at the time were in Victoria Street, near All Saints’ Church, so I fetched up as requested. He told me to sit down, shut up and don’t interrupt. He had something to tell me. I blinked a little – it is very unusual for an Officer to be so direct, but I did as I was told.
And here’s what he had to say: by paying back debts early and maximising Government grants that, at the time, were designed to encourage Councils to do that, he had made the Council a large sum of money. He didn’t know exactly how much yet, but it would be millions. Possibly £5.6 million. I would need to consider what to do with it.
Wow!
I had my wits about me enough to congratulate David, but I left feeling stunned. Dazed. Then as I drove out of the underground car park to go back to work, I saw David in my rear-view mirror chasing me down Victoria Street. (There’s a picture that’s imprinted in my mind!) I stopped and lowered the window.
“We’ve just got the final figure. It’s £6.4 million”, he panted, standing in the middle of the road.
And that’s how it all started.
A fateful decision
£6.4 million!
Normally Councillors struggle with the problem of not having enough money.
Here I was, as Leader, faced with a windfall. And a huge one at that. In many ways that’s a more difficult political problem than having a shortfall.
My immediate reaction, and one that I have held to ever since, was that we should do something significant with the money. Something that people could point to as a worthy use of David Pitt’s brilliant achievement.
The windfall could have financed a dozen half-million pound schemes, all worthy, but at the end of all that, people would ask ‘I wonder what happened to that £6.4 million?’
No, to my mind, it had to be something special.
Hero 2
Some years earlier the then Mayor, the late Brian Gaiger, a lovely man who represented Sherfield-on-Loddon as an independent Councillor, had had as his Mayor’s charity a ‘Civic Hall fund’.
My recollection is that he had in mind something quite modest – a larger meeting place than the Carnival Hall, a place for dances and music. But that doesn’t matter. Brian had set a context – he had sown a seed. I think the majority of the Councillors shared his aspiration. It was pretty safe to do that, especially if they thought that there was no chance of us actually finding the money to make it happen. But that was the prevailing mood.
Brian has passed away now but there is a road in Taylor’s Farm named after him. And any story of the Anvil would be incomplete without mentioning his initiative, because it set the scene for what happened next.
Hero 3
That afternoon I phoned the Chief Executive, David Pilkington, and asked whether the windfall could help us to realise the vision of a Civic Hall. That was a fateful phone call and a question that was destined to change my life – and Basingstoke’s.
It is worth, at this point, explaining how differently Councils operated in those days. We didn’t have ‘Executive Members’ – Councillors with the power to make spending decisions. We didn’t have a Cabinet. Instead, we had a very clear delineation that Members made policy and the Officer team implemented those policies. All executive power lay with the Officers. I, as Leader, couldn’t decide to assign resources to a project.
So, when I made my phone call, asking whether we might now be able to build the Civic Hall, it was up to the Chief Executive to decide how to answer my question. He made a brilliant decision.
David turned to a company already selected and contracted to the Council, who were experts in their field. We were about to refurbish the Haymarket Theatre and had chosen one of the most respected firms of architects in the leisure sector, called Renton Howard Wood Levin (RHWL).
The Management Team produced a briefing document detailing the background to the question and the advice the Council sought.
RHWL saw a chance. They conducted the study, as requested, but instead of answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’, they vastly over-reached their brief. They not only said ‘yes’, but came up with a conceptual design and a model showing how the hall might look, complete with a rising floor that could be used to generate tiers for the seats or an orchestra pit or a flat floor. It would cost, they estimated, about £11 million.
It needn’t just be a civic hall: it could be a concert hall, with world class acoustics, capable of being modified into a theatre, an auditorium or a sports area. It wouldn’t be one hall either, it could be two and it would fit onto land the Council already owned next to the town centre.
I have to confess, I was hooked straight away, not simply because the hall would be good asset but because the Borough needed it.
Again, this requires a few words of context.
Basingstoke was at a point where it had grown very quickly during the years of the London overspill agreement, but there was a constant complaint: there was nothing to do. I remember to this day an article in a Sunday newspaper magazine in which a resident complained that in Basingstoke, all you could do on a Saturday night was take home a video and a wine box. It wasn’t true, but it was undoubtedly the case that our population had grown faster than our leisure infrastructure. There was a distinct lack of recreation facilities and we had to catch up.
And I was now being told that Basingstoke could have a facility that wasn’t a compromise but would actually be up there with the very best. That’s what I wanted for the Borough. We could have a multi-purpose concert hall, a refurbished Haymarket Theatre and two miles of leisure stretching from the Par 3 Golf Course to the town centre, taking in the Leisure Park, which was another project we had started.
The land RHWL proposed for the Hall was lying fallow at the time, having been earmarked for a ‘Town Centre Phase 3’ that was never needed. Actually, there were plans to turn it into a car park.
I went back to David Pitt: could we finance an £11 million project?
Yes, we could: we would need to take some money from underspends and redeploy the funds from the car park project that wouldn’t now go ahead, and stop other capital spend for a while. But yes, we could do it.
And, of course, we could expect Hampshire County Council to contribute as they had a strategy for arts in North Hampshire … more of that, later.
Sharing the news
I needed to share the information as quickly as possible. I called a meeting of my fellow committee chairman. The Chief Executive booked the Romans Hotel at Silchester and RHWL attended, with the model they had made. They explained the whole thing. My colleagues said ‘yes’ to the idea and looked as shell-shocked as I had felt when David Pitt first revealed his windfall.
I took soundings from other people that I respected, including Andrew Hunter, our local Member of Parliament. He invited me to his home and we sat in his garden on a lovely, sunny afternoon.
Andrew advised me not to do it. Large projects like this had a habit of blowing up in peoples’ faces. He saw it as too great a risk, that would risk damaging the Party’s reputation for sound financial management in Basingstoke. But then he added, and I’ve never forgotten this: “However, if you do decide to go ahead, you’ll have my public backing.”
I was immensely grateful to Andrew, both for his sober assessment and for his loyalty. He had made it clear: this would be an enormous risk that, if it went wrong, would harm the Council’s reputation for good financial management. Other people in the Party gave me similar advice. “Don’t risk your reputation for financial soundness”.
Politically, this left me out on a limb. But by that time I was convinced that this was the right thing to do for the Borough. In my opinion it was too big a chance to miss. It was something that Basingstoke needed. I was willing to take the risk – but I knew that I would be putting my neck, my political career, on the chopping block in the process.
It wasn’t that I was backing myself. More importantly, I had faith in the team of Officers at the Council. They would have to deliver this. I believed we had the people to do it. They were a superb team, far better than found in other local authorities.
I briefed the Conservative Group and the opposition parties that we would be introducing the proposal. I expected a wholly positive reaction.
Instead, all hell broke loose.
The opposition mounts
The first line of attack was that too much had been done in secret. Then local architects maintained that they should have been allowed to design it. They said that the hall was too small. It should have 2,000 seats, not 1,400. They produced drawings on how it could look, in conjunction with a new office block and a re-routing of the car park exit ramp.
Their design was impractical and unaffordable, in my opinion. RHWL were quite clear too: 2,000 seats would require too large an annual subsidy: their advice was that filling them would have been too difficult.
Besides, when choosing the architects for a no-compromise scheme like this, local would be nice but actually, we needed the expertise of the very best in the field. We needed specialist experts. Although the local paper plugged it heavily, the alternative approach never really took off as an option.
And then Hampshire County Council refused to back it. That was a real blow – a bizarre decision because a concert venue for North Hampshire was in their arts strategy. But there was no shaking them from that position. Whilst I was willing to give Hampshire a partnership role in delivering the Hall, they refused. They were not going to put money into it, and that was the end of it.
OK, back to David Pitt. I asked … can we do this without Hampshire? Ouch, but yes, we could. And we pressed ahead alone – a Borough Council now undertaking a project of regional significance.
The Hall itself
The external design of the hall was modern, but, again, it had to meet a brief. I wanted a building that was self-advertising. By that I meant a building that when you see it, you know you have found it.
The pointed prow and angular design were not an immediate hit. But modern architecture rarely is. Today the hall is part of the Basingstoke landscape and wholly accepted.
And, importantly, a stranger coming into Basingstoke looking for the Concert Hall would certainly know that he had found it.
Flexibility and catering for everyone
Inside, the seating is arranged in one long tier that slopes up to the very roof. There are seats round the sides and, increasingly popular for classical concerts, people can sit in the choir stalls behind the orchestra if they are not being used by performers. In this format the Anvil can host 1,400 visitors.
Alternatively, a proscenium arch can be pulled up from the front of the stage and locked into place, creating a theatre format. And, if the need arises, the ‘stalls’ seats are bleachers, that can be stowed away, creating an exhibition space or dance floor. And, at the back, the rear doors were wide enough to drive cars and vans onto the hall floor, should it be hosting (say) a car launch or an exhibition.
In those days, there was not such an emphasis placed on accessibility for all. I was very pleased that the Anvil was designed with easy access in mind. There are spaces near the front of the hall for wheelchair users, which can be reached with no steps or barriers to negotiate. Outside, there is a drop-off point under the car park ramp from where people with restricted mobility can gain access. Inside there are hearing loops for those who need them.
This detailed thinking, the expertise and the excellence were at the front of my mind as we approached the big vote that would decide whether the project would go ahead.
A big vote
On 18th June 1992, a year after first learning about the money, the crunch decision came in the Council Chamber.
I have at home a piece of paper with the name of every Councillor at that time and how I believed they would vote. I had phoned every one, especially the opponents and the waverers, to talk through the decision and make sure that I knew what their intentions were at that meeting. I talked some round, I think.
My friend, the then Deputy Mayor, Keith Brant, who sadly passed away a few years ago, couldn’t support it but rather than be disloyal to me, he found that he had another engagement that day.
What a wonderful friend Keith was. We had served together as Councillors in Brighton Hill and been through political thick and thin together. We never fell out over this issue and, before he died, he asked me to deliver the eulogy at his funeral, which I was proud to do.
Hero 4
The Mayor, Keith Chapman, chaired the Council meeting superbly. Keith was the Councillor for the Calleva area and, I found out later, a lover of Mahler. He was a firm supporter of the project and went on to chair the Members’ project group.
The atmosphere in the Council Chamber crackled with tension. There was one intervention that night that could have derailed the project. A dual-hatted Borough and County Councillor, the then Chairman of Hampshire County Council, waved a piece of paper claiming that Hampshire would demand a million pounds for road improvements if we went ahead. That would blow the budget.
Keith Chapman adjourned the meeting. What has never been reported is that, during the adjournment, we offered to photocopy the Councillor’s paper and distribute it, as we were about to put something round that would refute what he had said. He declined. To this day I don’t know what was on that paper that he waved at us.
The Gazette reported me as saying “These are very serious allegations, without foundation. The County cannot, by law, ask for that money because planning permission has already been granted. My opinion is that [these claims] are false and there is no credence to them whatsoever.”
David Pilkington was superb: when we reconvened, he said that Hampshire had taken too long to reply to the consultation on the planning application, which had been approved. “If they send us a bill for a million pounds, we will send it back. It’s as simple as that”, he advised the Council. End of discussion.
By chance I met David Pilkington in 2021, in a supermarket of all places. Our conversation quickly turned to that moment, which is indelibly stamped on both our memories.
During the debate I sought to present the hall as part of a greater vision for the Borough – an aspirational approach. I told the Members: “What we’ve needed in Basingstoke is a heart, a focal point, something that makes people proud to live in the town. … this debate is about the quality of life for the people of the Borough for generations to come.”
An opponent said, “It’s in the wrong place, at the wrong time and it’s the wrong design.” This was a very negative and formulaic approach, and didn’t command support.
The motion to build the hall was carried. To say that I was pleased would be an understatement. I think I would have had to resign as Leader of the Council had it not passed. I would have led the Authority down a path that it had ultimately rejected, and I would have lost the confidence of my colleagues.
The ‘Basingstoke Gazette’ carried the story on its front page on Monday 22nd June and then quite a subdued article in its main Friday edition, tucked away on page 6.
Anyhow, the hall was approved. The challenge now was to build it. And to choose a name.
Hero 5
Here comes the name of Hero 5: Gordon Holdcroft. Gordon was the Director of Leisure Services at the Borough, and went on to be Chief Executive. He project-managed the building of the hall with utmost professionalism and he exuded calmness and control. He was one of those people who, if he came to me with a problem, would also come with a solution.
We decided to go for a management contract. Normally with large contacts, the whole thing is designed as one huge bid and tenders are received. The tenders are inevitably heavily loaded with risk costs.
The Management Contract approach enabled the project to be broken down into individual packages – manageable chunks, as it were – and for experts to be brought in to handle each one. It also enabled design work for the later packages to be going on in parallel with the build work for the earlier ones, and this cut timescales.
We appointed Costain as managing contractors and tendered for each package of work separately, with Costain managing the winning companies.
We set up an Anvil project committee chaired by Keith Chapman, who resumed being Chairman of the Leisure and Recreation Committee after his Mayoral year. He was a tower of strength and absolutely committed to the project. We are still in regular contact through social media and the occasional meet-up.
A bit about the Acoustics.
One of the work packages that I found fascinating was the design of the acoustics. Arup Acoustics did the work and their expertise was phenomenal.
For example: if you go into the hall, you will see large curved panels round the sides. They are not there for decoration: they are there to reflect the music evenly around the auditorium.
You will also see nozzles high up in the side walls – the air conditioning outlets. Behind them are huge ducts, large enough for a person to walk through. This allows huge volumes of air to be moved slowly into the hall, avoiding unwanted hisses and whistles.
And if you look up at the roof, you will see strengthening ridges in the concrete. But they are not evenly spaced. They are unevenly spread deliberately, so as not to generate any unwanted harmonics.
The smaller hall, which is called the Forge, is also acoustically good. None of its four walls runs parallel with the others, to control the sounds. It is therefore able to host smaller recitals and spoken-word evmts.
And here’s a final snippet. The Anvil is actually two buildings. The metal prow is a free-standing structure in its own right, holding all the air conditioning equipment. It is joined to the main hall by rubber seals so that no noise or vibration is carried through that might interfere with the entertainment.
Under way!
We dug the first turf at a ‘Sod Turning’ ceremony on Monday 3rd August 1992, just under 2 months after making the decision. Present were many of the leading players, but most especially Nick Thomson and Norman Bragg from RHWL who did most to design the hall. Nick was the chief architect.
We then settled into a pattern: invite tenders for a package, open them, analyse them, choose the winning contractor and set them to work.
But very quickly there was a disaster. One of the early packages was for the steelworks, and the winning contractor went bust, meaning a delay and the need to appoint another, inevitably more expensive company. A large chunk of our contingency was eaten up.
We pressed on, striving to make up for lost time and anxiously opening tenders for the later work packages that we now needed more than ever to come in as budgeted. By and large, they did.
At the time my paid employment was at a company in Daneshill, and I used to visit the site at least once a week during my lunch break. I was down there so often that Costain gave me a hard hat labelled ‘STEPHEN REID BDBC. On the back it said, ‘The buck stops here’.
But there was a serious point to my frequent visits: yes, I was interested to monitor progress. But also, I wanted to make it clear how much this project mattered to the Leader of the Council, that I was fully behind it and determined that it should be delivered on time and on budget.
So it was that I walked every inch of the building during its construction and learnt what made it work. I have been underneath the hall from one end to the other. I have explored all the metal walkways that criss-cross the ceiling.
I looked at the area under the stage where the removable seating is stored, and saw the storage area that was built under the car park ramp.
And I learnt that the ladies’ toilets are built deliberately larger than the mens’, for reasons I am sure I do not have to explain!
Eventually, in an official ceremony on 17th August 1993, I climbed out onto the topmost part of the roof for the ‘topping out’ ceremony. I shovelled the final heap of structural concrete into place at the top of the plant tower, some 25 metres above street level. I was quoted as saying that no project had ever given me so much satisfaction. That remains true to this day.
Work now moved on to fitting out the interiors.
Coming up with a name
We held a competition to choose the name. It was a failure.
We wanted a name that would become associated with Basingstoke. A single word. Something like the Crucible (synonymous with Sheffield) or the Hexagon (Reading). Not the ‘The Fred Bloggs Hall’.
In the end we chose the name ourselves and let the competition quietly drop. The angular design of the building lent itself to being called ‘The Anvil’. We settled on that and the associated logos for the building emphasised its angular shape.
It was as if the hall had been designed with that name in mind, but that is not the case.
Fake News is nothing new!
Even before the advent of social media, misconceptions about this major scheme were rife. The huge down-side of social media today is that the bar-room lawyers, who used to pontificate to six people in the pub are now able to spout their bile to thousands. Lies become fact, ignorance becomes knowledge, prejudice becomes reason.
It has never ceased to amaze me how many barrack-room experts came to me, even then, to tell me why the whole project was flawed, and how we hadn’t thought it through properly. I was harangued everywhere I went.
“There’s not enough car parking”, I was told. (It was next to what was then the largest multi-storey car park in Europe).
You’re going to ruin Glebe Gardens by turning it into a car park (Glebe Gardens was never going to be touched).
My favourite know-it-all comment was: “It shouldn’t go there. You’ve forgotten about the noise from the railway.” I had discussed exactly that point with the design team. The railway doesn’t produce a lot of noise. It produces vibrations, which had to be dampened. The greatest source of external noise was … can you guess? The bells of St Michael’s Church – they are loud, they are high up and there is nothing to reduce the impact before their peals hit the walls of the Anvil.
“Why do you want a concert hall in Basingstoke?” I was asked. Because I have aspirations for the town. Because I want Basingstoke to have something world class. Because it will help the local economy, bringing people here who currently do not come. Because, along with the Leisure Park, it will help to make good the shortfall in entertainment infrastructure.
When we came to start the redevelopment of Festival Place, one of the comments we received from the company that took on the development was that they were attracted by the self-belief we had shown in building the Anvil.
And when the Anvil started operating, I was told that one venue that felt a loss of ticket sales was the Royal Festival Hall in London.
A recent survey found that for every pound the Councils put into it, the Anvil generates six pounds for the local economy.
Success!
We saw the project through and in the end delivered it on time, and pretty much on budget – and that’s unheard of in local government.
Also, after a change of Leader, Hampshire County Council agreed to contribute – not to the hall itself but to the red footbridge that crosses Churchill Way. They put in £300,000.
In terms of protecting the Council’s reputation for managing its finances well, I was delighted, the following year, to announce that we had made the Borough Council debt-free, in parallel with financing the building of the Anvil. It prompted the Basingstoke Gazette to say in its editorial on 10th Feb 1995: “So credit where credit is due. The local Council officers and Councillors deserve a pat on the back.”
It’s not often that a local paper gives a compliment like that, so I valued it and kept that copy of the paper.
We built the Anvil in the teeth of a recession for £12.4 million and on the day the keys were handed over Keith Chapman was told that it was already worth double that. I am certain that had we not built it when we did, it would never have happened.
The Anvil opened in April 1994, two years and ten months after David Pitt generated the windfall for us.
I’ll repeat that – two years, ten months.
These days, a Council wouldn’t even have made a decision in that time. In under three years, which in local government terms is nothing, a Borough Council punching way above its weight took a major project, of regional significance, from ‘gleam in the eye’ to completion.
I have heard people say that it would be impossible today for a Council to make such a decision, let alone see it through successfully, and I think that may well be true.
The Opening
There were some unadvertised events in April 1994, before the official opening, so that hall staff could get used to operating the building. Joe Pasquale, the comedian, came and so did D’Ream, a pop group that was doing very well in the charts at the time. One of their members regularly revisits the Anvil to this day, often trying out his new educational talks – Professor Brian Cox, the physicist.
The official ‘Gala Opening concert’ took place at the beginning of May and saw Julian Lloyd-Webber playing Elgar’s Cello Concerto (I still have the programme) and, yes, the acoustics were sublime. I think he had a cold that night, because we could even hear him sniffing as he played!
The Anvil received glowing praise from the national press. ‘Acoustics as warm as an Italian piazza”, said one. “For the money, it is astonishing”, wrote another.
Other quotes:
“The Anvil can already challenge the most established venues in the country” (Stage and TV Today).
“The Anvil is an asset that has been made to sweat. Not only was the budget startlingly low for a building of this nature, but it must be capable of adapting to a variety of uses” (Sunday Times).
“… Basingstoke has a hall which offers a rare combination of clarity in texture and generosity in colour” (The Times).
“… and a very fine hall it is too, particularly acoustically, and at £12.5 million it is cheap by current standards” (The Independent).
Performers who come the Anvil love it. They love playing in a hall with good acoustics, and they also find it an intimate place, where they feel in contact with their audience. Because it has one continuous slope of seats, everyone has an uninterrupted view of the artists and the artists can see everyone too.
Over the years, the Anvil has proven to be a huge asset to the Borough. Many people have told me how surprised they were the first time they went there, to see how large it is inside: it doesn’t look possible from the outside. It has put on an impressive variety of entertainment: pop and classical concerts, recitals, performances by local schools, the Mayor’s Ball, Recruitment Fairs and pantomimes.
And when I go and witness people enjoying events as varied as that, I feel intensely proud of what it is and what we did.
At the opening concert they played the Anvil Chorus. And I don’t mind telling you, I had a tear in my eye.