Applause, applause

Bury’s Theatre Royal, the only Regency theatre in the UK, is a hidden attraction that deserves to have its name up in lights

- Lindsay Want

If you’re in love with the architecturally awesome, Suffolk sees you spoilt for choice. From Lavenham’s half-timbered Corpus Christi Guildhall to redbrick Melford Hall, the National Trust’s local portfolio alone provides some pretty impressive visiting.

But there’s one place technically in its care which always seems upstaged by the likes of Ickworth House and looked down upon by the millennium tower of St Edmundsbury Cathedral.

The Theatre Royal at Bury St Edmunds keeps a low profile beneath the town-centre buildings of Greene King brewery, and may be nothing much to look at from the outside as you weave your way around the curves of Westgate Street.

But step into the original Georgian foyer. Treat yourself to a ticket for a performance. Above all, book a place on one of its regular guided tours.

Once you’re through the door to the auditorium, this place will blow you away. . . although perhaps not in quite the same way as it would have done, had you found yourself suddenly catapulted back in time to jostle through its doors in the 1820s.

“Take a whiff of these,” invites dapper gentleman guide Rory O’Brien, with a certain thespian flourish, offering up an array of coloured- glass potion bottles to members of his unsuspecting audience.

There’s an exchange of suspicious glances, as stoppers are gingerly removed. Then a whole cast of grins and grimaces as various distillations of Eau de Regency Theatre release their unexpected aromas up supersensitive 21st-century nostrils.

“Ah, I see you got the manure one,” smiles Rory, looking at the lady who has reached for her hankie. One by one, raised hands own up to nasal passage experiences ranging from waft of tallow candle or pipe smoke, to zesty oranges, sooty fires, oil lamps and unclean bodies.