According to contemporary building journals, the number of theatres built, rebuilt or remodelled in the British Isles 1840-1920 was as follows:

Thus the total over a period of eighty years is 413. Allowance should be made for the metropolitan emphasis of early and mid-Victorian trade journals; no doubt provincial theatres were built which escaped the notice of the Builder, but a distinct boom is shown from 18% to the end of Edward VII’s reign. The first world war and the coming of the Picturedrome account for the paucity of building in the decade before 1920.