Parke’s People No.11. Yvonne Arnaud

Published on: 28 Dec, 2012
Updated on: 28 Dec, 2012

In the latest of an occasional series about people who have a connection with Guildford in one way or another, Bernard Parke recalls the actress and musician Yvonne Arnaud, a name well known today as that of the town’s theatre.

Actress and musician Yvonne Arnaud.

For some, the paths to the top of St Martha’s Hill are tortuous and remote. But it is in the quiet churchyard there, far removed from the glamour of her lifestyle, that Yvonne Arnaud requested that her ashes be scattered.

Nestling against the low boundary wall of the churchyard is a modest memorial tablet erected not only to her memory but to her late husband, the actor Hugh Mclellan. In their latter years they lived at Effingham.

Yvonne Arnaud was born in Bordeaux in the last decade of the 19th century, the daughter of a French army officer. While still a child she became an accomplished pianist, entering the Paris Conservatoire at the tender age of nine years.

It was in her thirties that she entered the world of comedy and played in many Whitehall farces. However, her talent as a singer was damaged by an operation to her vocal cords.

See died in 1958 in her sixty fifth year after an operation on a cerebral haemorrhage.

The theatre that today bears her name was opened in 1965 and is an active memorial to a woman who gave so much pleasure to her audiences.

The memorial that marks where Yvonne Arnaud’s ashes were scattered in the churchyard at St Martha’s near Chilworth.

St Martha’s Church.

In this view work has just started on the building of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre.

The theatre today from the same viewpoint as the previous photo – a window on the top floor of the adjacent mill building. These images are from the book Guildford A Walk Through Time by David Rose and Martin Giles.