Overview

Audrey Noble (1915 - 2016) was a Bristol born actor who worked in army theatre productions and with ENSA during the Second World War. She had her first big break in television in 1959 playing Mistress Quickly in the the series The Life and Death of Sir John Falstaff, subsequently having TV credits in popular drama series such as Softly Softly, Crossroads, and Casualty. 

Elocution lessons in her teens afforded her a walk on part in a production of Hamlet at the Prince’s Theatre, Clifton. At 17 she enrolled in drama classes run by Mervyn Johns of the Rapier Players and was soon invited to work as assistant stage manager for the company at the Little Theatre. She made her first appearance with the Rapier Players in the late 1930s and took small parts until their chief character actress was called up for war service and Noble was elevated to the position. She joined the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) in 1941 and toured the UK as well as appearing in ENSA productions in France, Brussels and Germany.

After the war Noble worked in rep as a reliable and popular character actress for numerous UK companies. She returned to the stage in Bristol on several occasions: in the 1950s and early 1960s at the Little Theatre, and then joining Bristol Old Vic company for seasons in the 1960s and 1980s. Alongside her stage career, Noble also worked in television and radio, most notably a regular role in Crossroads in the 1970s. Her final stage performance was in Bristol Old Vic’s production of Tartuffe in 1985. Noble died in Bristol in 2016, a few months after her 101st birthday.

The Audrey Noble collection was repackaged, conserved and catalogued in 2017 as part of Bristol Old Vic's "Protecting and Sharing the Heritage of Britain's Oldest Theatre" project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Several other collections related to the Bristol Old Vic are held at the University of Bristol's Theatre Collection and Bristol Archives. These will also be catalogued as part of the project between 2017 and 2020. 

What the collection holds

The collection mainly comprises press cuttings, production photographs, and correspondence from colleagues and admirers of the actress Audrey Noble (1915 - 2016). This material was gathered by Noble and initially arranged into two albums (AN/1). These cover her career from its start with the Rapier Players in Bristol in the late 1930s up to the mid-1970s, by which point she was working for several regional companies as well as appearing on various television programmes. Loose press cuttings from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, when she retired from the stage (AN/5/1-3), may well have been collated with the intention of being presented in a similar album form.

Correspondence (AN/2), memorabilia (AN/3), photographs (AN/4) and programmes cover her career from the post-war period up to the early 1980s. The theatre historian Shirley Brown, who befriended Noble in 2002, collated the later material concerning Noble's centenary celebrations. Very little of the collection concerns Noble's personal life, with the exception of documents reflecting her religious beliefs (AN/8).

The online catalogue for this collection can be viewed here: 
AN - Audrey Noble Archive

Further information

Oral history interviews:
OH/29 by Shirley Brown highlighting Noble's memories of training with Mervyn Johns and Marian Page; the Rapier Players productions at the Little Theatre, Bristol (1938-42), army theatre in London in 1940 and other memories, recorded in 2002. Together with a Garrison Theatre recording from 1945 of the play June Mad from the time performing with ENSA.
OH/30 and OH/33 two interviews by Maureen Brown, recorded in 2003.