In 1020s Britain, popular live theatre was a great escape from the grim reality and austerities of everyday life. For her new lovel, Bishop Auckland writer Wendy Robetson immersed herself in the lost world of the travelling theatre groups which visited the region.

A FRIEND of mine, Bishop Auckland born and bred, tends to direct people in the town via the 'Theatre Corner'. This is despite the fact that the Eden Theatre was pulled down decades ago - as was the iconic Rossi's Caf opposite - to make way for the traffic lights and crossroads which define present day Bishop Auckland.

Unlike Rossi's Caf, which - invigorated by Sixties and Seventies juke box caf culture - was still going strong when it was demolished, the Eden Theatre, had, in the second half of the 20th century gone through the humiliating incarnations of cinema, bingo hall and dereliction before being demolished to make way for the new road system cudgelling its way through the heart of this old market town.

The raffish glamour of the Theatre Corner, with the grandiose theatre, the Theatre Bar, and Rossi's Caf opposite, is part of the mythic past of this town. Tales cluster around it like iron filings to a magnet.

The biggest iron filing, of course, is that of film comedian Stan Laurel, whose father, Arthur Jefferson, was manager of the theatre in the 1890s and again in the early 1920s. Stan attended the grammar school, first as a day boy then briefly as a boarder.

There are houses in the town centre which were once theatrical digs, and there are tales of the 'theatricals' who came to town, dusting it with spurious glamour before parting again. Mr Rossi once told me of the week when one of the actors who swept into the caf each evening in his big hat and cloak, (I think there was a cloak - perhaps I am adding to the myth), requesting a cup of Mr Rossi's excellent coffee and promising to pay on Friday. Of course, on Friday he didn't turn up and the bill was never paid.

Famous people passed through the theatre portals. Mrs Patrick Campbell, beloved of George Bernard Shaw, failed to impress Mr Jefferson when she reneged on a contract. Later, nationally known comedians like Wee Georgie Wood gave Bishop Auckland people a laugh.

So when I was looking for a theatre location for my new novel No Rest For The Wicked where else could I set it but the Eden Theatre, Bishop Auckland? Having lived here for 30 years, perhaps I could add to the myth.

I have wanted for ages to write about the closed world of a travelling theatre group. I was convinced of the theme by the journalist Virginia Hiller, to whom the novel is dedicated. Virginia is the niece of the actress Wendy Hiller and is eerily like her. In Virginia's house in Battersea I leafed through some of her fascinating theatrical collection and listened to her tales of dancing troupes where children as young as ten or 11 were worked as hard as any adult, performing six shows a week and were often vulnerable to financial, physical, and sexual exploitation. Very modern themes.

This novel, I eventually decided, would be set in 1923. By that time the euphoria of victory in the Great War had faded. There had been a grim miner's strike in 1921 and the creeping nightmare of unemployment and underpayment was setting the scene for the 1926 General Strike.

In those days, ordinary hard-pressed people turned for light relief to sport, churches and chapels, pubs and clubs, and the live theatre where the participation of travelling companies meant that programmes could be changed every week.

With its roots in music hall, popular live theatre was the people's entertainment, as is television today. Bishop Auckland had two theatres, (one of which, in 1923, was succumbing to the more manageable seduction of moving pictures. Scenes of things to come). Even small towns like Shildon and Spennymoor had their theatres. The great theatres of the region like Sunderland Empire and the Theatre Royal Newcastle were venues of national status, mentioned in many theatrical memoirs.

Apart from reading dozens of volumes of theatrical memoirs, programmes and reviews of that time, my most vivid insight into the week-by-week experience of theatrical life was the account book of the Eden Theatre in 1923, when Arthur Jefferson was manager.

In this ledger, now lodged in Bishop Auckland Town Hall, we read of the companies that moved through the doors and performed under the proscenium arch on which was carved in gold the words "One Touch of Nature Makes The Whole World Kin". Plays. Musicals. Dramas. Variety. All are accounted for here.

In these pages we learn how much each company cost, what expenses they incurred, what profit accrued to the management. Here we note the hire of a grand piano from Mr Brotherton. (There is still a Brotherton's music shop on Newgate Street.) Here are the payments for the board-men to parade the programme round the town. Here is the account of the free entry for the workhouse people to swell the crowd on a thin Thursday. Here, most of all, are the 'manager's comments' from the irascible Mr Jefferson, who was not so respectful of his Bishop Auckland patrons as the sentimental modern myth would have. The ledger brings him to life in his own words.

Mr Jefferson has a walk-on role in my novel... "the doors burst open and through them came the manager, an elderly, fussy man, immaculately dressed. He smiled wrily and put out a hand towards AJ.

'Mr Jefferson!' boomed AJ

'A.J. Palmer! Well met!' He shook Mr Palmer heartily by the hand, then turned to Mrs Palmer and took her hand closely in his. 'You look well, Hermione. Blooming!' She was. Her lip and cheek rouge were immaculately placed and her hair swung glossily under her feathered cloche hat."

In the story the Palmers own and run a company called Palmer's Varieties, which travels from Paris via London to the North-East on a short tour that takes in the Eden Theatre Bishop Auckland and Sunderland Empire. The closed fictional world of the theatre troupe breeds its own tragedy, its own comedy, its own drama, especially for my main characters: Pippa, who joins the company in Paris, and Abigail Wharton the wardrobe mistress, an ex-dancer who broke both her ankles falling off the stage at Wilton's Music Hall in London.

Of course, my story and all the characters in it, except Mr Jefferson, are invented. Even so, today, as I drive through the busy junction at the Theatre Corner, I can see the old Eden Theatre as clear as day, with Mr Jefferson, the Palmers, Pippa and Abigail bustling about their adventurous business in 1923.