'My first and strong impression on visiting the Palace Theatre was that what confronted me, within and without, was surviving evidence of a magnificent dream and a once noble purpose.

Within its now rather mournful silence, that has come about because of so many years of previous neglect, it seems there exists still the waiting voice of a living thing which says; I am old, I am careworn and I am frayed at the edges but I am still as much alive and as magnificent as I was when I began. Find me again.

Lines from T S Eliot's poem "Four Quartets" rang out -

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from"

All theatres, old ones and new ones, have voices. Sounding voices are the essence of them; and it is by virtue of the quality of the dream that inspired the original creator of a theatre, that the strength and force of those voices survives undimmed or fades through time.

In his conceiving and building the Palace Theatre there can be little doubt that Alfred Bucknall's intended purpose was to provide a home for artistry at its highest attainable level to inspire our thoughts and to give pleasure and comfort to man's soul.

It is a noble undertaking indeed to honour the remembered purpose of Alfred Bucknall's original dream and to bring back and restore the glory that was once, so long ago, in a live and vital theatre.

So Swansea, show us the metal you're made of!'