Heritage Open Day: Access all areas in a guided tour of Preston Playhouse - built for worship, used for drama! See front of house and backstage, discovering the history of the building and how performances are created here today. The Playhouse was built in 1847 as a Friends Meeting House, used by the Quakers for worship. It was described as 'a square, neat-looking, five-windowed building', though at that point it was accessed from Friargate through an alley. Its ceiling was built especially high to ensure 'purity of air' for the congregation, which must have helped its conversion to a theatre a hundred years later.