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Rowena Cade (1893–1983) was the creator of the Minack Theatre in Porthcurno, Cornwall, UK.
Cade was born in Spondon near Derby on 2 August 1893.Rowena Cade, Creator of the Minack Theatre
cornwall-calling, Retrieved 26 June 2017 She was the older sister of
She discovered and bought the Minack headland in the 1920s for £100 and built a house. Her sister's marriage had ended in 1922 and she, and later her partner, also lived in Minack.
After Cade put on a local production of ''A Midsummer Night’s Dream'' in 1929, she began searching for a suitable venue for a permanent outdoor stage. The theatre is carved into the granite cliffs at Porthcurno, just a few miles from Land’s End.
She built the theatre herself with the help of her gardener Billy Rawlings in 1931–32. The stage took six months to build and the first performance was of Shakespeare's ''The Tempest'' in summer 1932. Without any formal lighting, the performance used batteries and car headlights to light the stage.
In 1976, Cade gave the theatre to a charitable trust. She died on 26 March 1983. The Cade family continued to be involved in the theatre – the general manager in 2015 was married to Rowena's great niece. The theatre is now managed by Philip Jackson and has featured in a number of BBC programmes about the South West of Britain.
cornwall-calling, Retrieved 26 June 2017 She was the older sister of
Katharine Burdekin
Katharine Burdekin (23 July 1896 – 10 August 1963) (born Katharine Penelope Cade) was a British novelist who wrote speculative fiction concerned with social and spiritual matters.John Clute,
"Burdekin, Katherine P(enelope)" in The Encyclopedi ...
and with her two brothers they lived at The Homestead in Spondon. Rowena Cade's family sold their house in Spondon and Cheltenham and moved to Lamorna in West Penwith
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...
, Cornwall after the First World War.
She discovered and bought the Minack headland in the 1920s for £100 and built a house. Her sister's marriage had ended in 1922 and she, and later her partner, also lived in Minack.
After Cade put on a local production of ''A Midsummer Night’s Dream'' in 1929, she began searching for a suitable venue for a permanent outdoor stage. The theatre is carved into the granite cliffs at Porthcurno, just a few miles from Land’s End.
She built the theatre herself with the help of her gardener Billy Rawlings in 1931–32. The stage took six months to build and the first performance was of Shakespeare's ''The Tempest'' in summer 1932. Without any formal lighting, the performance used batteries and car headlights to light the stage.
In 1976, Cade gave the theatre to a charitable trust. She died on 26 March 1983. The Cade family continued to be involved in the theatre – the general manager in 2015 was married to Rowena's great niece. The theatre is now managed by Philip Jackson and has featured in a number of BBC programmes about the South West of Britain.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cade, Rowena 1893 births 1983 deaths Theatre people from Cornwall People from Spondon