Philip Astley
1742–1814
Equestrian performer and circus proprietor. Offered circus entertainment in Lambeth, south London, from 1768. Astley’s New Amphitheatre of Arts and Sciences, an equestrian theatre, reopened in 1795 after a fire; it was demolished in 1893.
Source
ODNB.
Bibliography
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
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