Barnsley cinema history has claim to wide interest

The history of Barnsley’s picture houses has claims to a wider than purely local interest in two events in the South Yorkshire town, a hundred years apart, one tragic and the other bringing some optimism to cinema lovers.

In January 1908 sixteen children were killed in a crush when they went to see the then-novelty of moving pictures at the public hall in Eldon Street. In 2007 two Yorkshire businessmen re-opened the former Odeon Cinema (also in Eldon Street) to run it as the independent Parkway, thus reversing the national trend of cinema closures.

Now cinema and theatre historian Kate Taylor has provided an account of the history of cinema in the former Barnsley County Borough from the first showing of moving pictures at Berzac’s Colonial Circus at Town End in 1900 to the present day.

Miss Taylor recounts how some of the earliest licenses for the exhibition of films were granted to the Harvey Institute, the Temperance Hall, the Stores Inn, and a former potato warehouse which was named the Victoria.

All Barnsley’s purpose-built cinemas, from the Electric of 1911 to the Lundwood Savoy of 1935, are featured.

The author notes, inter alia, the opening of Barnsley’s super-cinema, the Ritz, in Peel Street in 1937, the fires which gutted the Pavilion in 1950 and the Empire in 1954, and the period in the 1940s when three of Barnsley’s cinemas were managed by women.

The book is fully illustrated with archive photographs and cinema advertising.

Cinemas of Barnsley is published by Mercia Cinema Society. Copies are available at £4 95p from the Department of Local Studies and Archives, Central Library, Shambles Street, Barnsley, and from Old Barnsley, Unit 14, in the Upper Market Hall. Copies can be obtained post-free from

Mervyn Gould
29 Blackbrook Court
Durham Road
Loughborough
Leicestershire
LE11 5UA.
Tel/fax: 01509 218393

e-mail: Mervyn.Gould@virgin.net (cheques to be made payable to Mercia Cinema Society)

Mercia Cinema Society is a national society dedicated to the research of picture-house history. It was formed in 1980 and is a registered charity.