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A historian is leading a campaign to stop the demolition of Ireland's oldest theatre.

The Lord Amiens Theatre at Aldborough House is located on Portland Row in the north inner city.

It dates back to 1795, and last month planning permission was granted to demolish the theatre as part of works to convert Aldborough House into an office block.

No other purpose-built 18th century theatres survive intact in Ireland, and only one operational 19th century theatre (The Gaiety Theatre which opened 1871, 76 years after the Lord Amiens Theatre) is left in the country.

Brice Stratford – a historian and theatre director descended from the family of the Earls of Aldborough – seeks to protect the building in situ, or to secure a site for removal and restoration of the theatre elsewhere.

He said: "Ireland's contribution to theatre in the 18th century was huge and lasting; to permanently and irreperably destroy the best physical link we have to this extraordinary past, let alone the loss of the oldest theatre building in the country, is beyond comprehension.

"The Lord Amiens Theatre must be saved; for Dublin, for Ireland, and for the Theatre community worldwide.”

The structure of the Lord Amiens Theatre remains exactly as it was in its heyday as a Georgian private theatre.

All other surviving Irish theatre buildings date to the 20th and 21st centuries, and even the oldest theatre in Britain (England's Georgian Theatre Royal, dating to 1788) is less than ten years older than the Lord Amiens Theatre.