Sadler’s Wells gave this year ‘various elegant and admired exercises on the tight-rope, by the inimitable Mr Richer and _La Belle Espagnole_, particularly Richer’s astonishing leap over the two garters, with various feats of agility and comic accompaniment by Dubois.’ This establishment and the Royalty gradually abandoned entertainments of this kind, and were at length converted into theatres; and the like change was effected at the Royal Circus, or rather at the building which rose upon the ruins made by the conflagration of 1805. Astley’s was burned again in 1803, when Mrs Woodhams, the mother of Mrs Astley, perished in the flames. Astley was again a heavy sufferer, the insurance not covering more than a fourth of the damage; but once more the building rose from its ruins, and it was again re-opened in 1804. Astley being occupied at the time with the construction of a circus in Paris, since known as Franconi’s, the new Amphitheatre was leased by him to his son, John Astley, with whom William Davis soon became associated as a partner. In 1805, the Royal Circus having been destroyed by fire, Philip Astley leased the site of the Olympic Theatre from Lord Craven for a term of sixty-one years, at a yearly rental of one hundred pounds, with the stipulation that two thousand five hundred pounds should be expended in the erection of a theatre. It was an odd-shaped piece of ground, and required some contrivance to adapt it to the purpose; but Astley, who was his own architect and surveyor, and indeed his own builder, for he is said to have employed the workmen he required without the intervention of a master, overcame all difficulties with his usual energy and fertility of resource.