Two Nineteenth-Century Glocester Barns Relocated to a Bristol Campus Theatre
1 Old Ferry Road, Bristol, RI 02809
Age
University campus; access for ticketed performance events and university-sponsored tours.
Cost
$$
Theatre performance tickets vary by production. Campus exterior viewing is free.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved campus walkways
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1840 · Adaptive reuse of nineteenth-century Rhode Island farm structures · Historic-preservation student rescue project (1981-1986) · Home of the Barn Summer Playhouse
The Barn at Roger Williams University combines two nineteenth-century working barns from rural Glocester, Rhode Island into a single relocated theatre structure on the Bristol campus. The two original buildings were constructed in 1840 and 1894 and served as horse barns on a working Glocester farm through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In 1981, the deteriorating barns were identified by a group of Roger Williams University historic-preservation students and faculty as a candidate for rescue and adaptive reuse. Over the following two years, the barns were dismantled timber by timber, transported to Bristol, and reconstructed on the RWU campus. The reconstructed building opened in 1986 as a combined theatre, rehearsal-studio, and faculty-office facility.
The interior performance space was later named the William N. Grandgeorge Theatre and serves as the principal home of the Roger Williams University Theatre program. The Barn also hosts the Barn Summer Playhouse, the university's summer-season repertory program. The building is part of the active university campus and is accessible to the public via ticketed performances and university-sponsored events.
Sources
The 'Banquo' tradition at the Barn is the most distinctive piece of theatre folklore on the Roger Williams University campus. Students and faculty refer to the building's presumed presence by that name — borrowed from the murdered character in Shakespeare's Macbeth whose ghost appears at Banquo's banquet — and the figure features in the standard theatre superstition that surrounds the building.
The origin story circulated within the theatre program holds that a farmhand froze to death in the hayloft of one of the two original Glocester barns during a nineteenth-century winter, and that the presence at the Barn traces to that incident. The underlying farmhand-death account is not documented in the Glocester town histories or in published RWU sourcing reviewed for this listing; it is presented here as part of the theatre tradition rather than as established history. The barns were working agricultural buildings for the better part of a century before relocation, and a worker fatality in the hayloft would not be unusual for rural Rhode Island work conditions of the period — but the specific incident remains an oral-tradition account.
Reports attributed to Banquo include cold spots in the performance space, lighting cues triggered without an operator at the board, footsteps on the catwalks above the stage during late-night rehearsals, and small props that disappear and reappear elsewhere in the building. None of these reports is unusual within theatre-superstition tradition, and the Barn fits a familiar pattern of New England university theatres with named-presence folklore.
Notable Entities
The Barn serves as the William N. Grandgeorge Theatre, the home of the Roger Williams University Theatre program and the Barn Summer Playhouse. Public access is via ticketed performances during the school year and the summer season.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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