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 Stuart Smith, 100 Wickfield Road, Hackenthorpe, Sheffield, S12 4TT (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.

This is the latest publication from the Society- it will be sent free to all Members with Bioscope 107.

Barnsley Cinemas - Kate Taylor A5 60pp saddle-stitched. Laminated card covers. £4.95 retail

The BKSTS Cinema Technology Magazine- by Jim Slater

I was pleased to receive as an early Christmas present a copy of an interesting book by Mervyn Gould, one of a series published by the Mercia Cinema Society, which was founded in 1980 to promote and publish research into the history of picture houses.

Basingstoke
Entertained

A History of Cinema in this
Hampshire Market Town
I was amazed to see that ‘Basingstoke Enter­tained’ is the Society’s 63rd book, and delighted know that this is Mervyn’s fourth book about the history of cinema and the theatre, and that he has three more in preparation, which are expected to be published this year. Mervyn cer­tainly knows his stuff - he started his career in 1963 in the projection room of a 1937 cinema, and after touring and West End work, became a university technical tutor in stage management and lighting.

The book was of special interest to me. Basing­stoke was the town that I moved to when I first came ‘down south’ to work in 1970 - it was the only place I could afford a four-bedroom detached house within an hour’s commuting distance of Oxford Circus, and turned out to be a very pleasant town which had recently expanded from its historic market town origins to include a much larger ‘new town’ area which included a surprising number of green spaces as well as the expected range of modern shops and facilities and a large number of traffic round­abouts for which the town became notorious. I have to confess that this book about cinemas in Basingstoke took me completely by surprise - I kept trying to think `where on earth was this cinema?’ as the author rolled out lists of venues that had existed over a period of nearly 100 years, but after a few chapters the truth dawned - by 1970, when I arrived, the only remaining cinema was the ABC / Waldorf on the edge of the then market square, (picture below) all the others having disappeared in the years prior to the town’s redevelopment.

The only historic cinema-related building that I actually recognised had by my time become the Haymarket Theatre ( I remember seeing ‘Gaslight’ and ‘The Ghost Train’ there) and I was fascinated to learn from the book that this historic building had once been The Corn Exchange (animated pictures were evidently shown there in 1900) and The Grand Exchange Cinema. Mervyn manages to weave in a fasci­nating series of small-town tales of local business entrepreneurs and more or less villainous local town councillors, and presents a very interesting picture of how cinema developed in the first half of the twentieth century. He suggests that George Casey, who leased the Corn Exchange in 1913 and converted it into the Grand Exchange Cinema and Vaudeville Theatre, was perhaps the man who had the most impact on Basing­stoke entertainment, subsequently converting the old drill hall into the Pavilion dance hall, reconstructing it as the Plaza, and opening the purpose-built Waldorf in 1935.

The book tells of three early cinemas, converted from the Corn Exchange, a swimming baths (converted into The Electric Theatre), and the Drill Hall. It records the fire which destroyed the Grand in 1925, the race to show the first talkies in 1929, and the building of a super cinema on a concrete raft on swampy ground in 1935. It notes the first incursion of a national cinema circuit when Union Cinemas acquired three Basingstoke venues in 1937 and of the muted opening of the Savoy in the first months of the second world war. There are nostalgic mentions of the formation of the ABC Minors’ Club in 1945 and the experiments with 3D and Cinemascope in the 1950s. The struggles of the cinema industry nationally are reflected in the closing of the Savoy in 1966 and the conversion of the ABC to provide two screens in 1977.

The book is very up to date, mentioning the cur­rent multiplexes in the new Festival Place shop­ping centre (Vue) and at an out of town leisure site (Odeon), even mentioning that the Odeon has a digital cinema projector, and surprised me with the news that The Anvil, Basingstoke’s 1990s Concert Hall, has film projection facilities for an audience of about 800 on a 10 metre wide screen.

The book will obviously be of great interest to anyone with Basingstoke connections, but I am sure that many more Cinema Technology readers will find this a fascinating read. It is only £8.95, and contains lots of interesting old photos of cinema interiors and exteriors, with copies of cinema posters and playbills from the earliest times. You will enjoy it!

Jim Slater

Basingstoke Entertained, by Mervyn Gould. 98pps, paperback ISBN: 0-946406-62-6 A5 Available post-free by sending a cheque made payable to Mercia Cinema Society to Stuart Smith, Mercia Sales, 100 Wickfield Road, Hackenthorpe, Sheffield, S12 4TT.

cinema technology - march 2008

BASINGSTOKE ENTERTAINED

Mervyn Gould

Mercia Cinema Society, 2007

Paperback, 98pp., £8.95

ISBN 10: 0-946406-62-6

Since Basingstoke has never had a purpose built theatre this book, perhaps naturally, centres on the history its cinemas. However there is a record of plenty of live entertainment within its pages and its author, long time SMA member, Mervyn Gould, in his fourth book (and there are three more in the pipeline!) has, as usual, spared no effort in his research to provide an exhaustive study of his subject. We may read about strolling players, live entertainment at the Hiring Fairs, and fit-ups in various venues both under cover and al fresco, long before the moving pictures came on the scene. Later there was still room for variety, pantomime and even weekly rep. and no theatre history is complete without a fire.

For this reader a gazetteer would have been useful to help keep track of the frequent changes of name and the rebuilds at the numerous sites enumerated in this work. Much at the centre of cinematic activity in Basingtoke for more than twenty years was George Casey, who in 1913 converted the Corn Exchange, at that time a skating rink, into a cinema and variety theatre. He later converted the old Drill Hall into a variety theatre before it was reconstructed as a cinema. His other interests and activities are fully explored.

Appended is a lengthy newspaper report of the fire which all but destroyed the Grand Cinema, formerly the Corn Exchange, in 1925. The fire occurring at night, there were no fatalities, but a touring revue company, currently in occupation, lost all their props and costumes. The shell of the building was later redeveloped and eventually renamed the Haymarket.

The expansion of the cinema industry, developments in sound technology, the rise of the national circuits and the more recent arrival of the multiplex cinema, are all subjects examined in as far as they were manifested in Basingstoke.

The book concludes with a study of the formation of the Horseshoe Theatre Company at the Haymarket, later developments at that venue, the building of the Anvil concert hall in 1994 and the current provision of public entertainment in Basingstoke.

The author’s thoroughly readable style, is, as usual, enriched by the provision of numerous illustrations, from photographs, plans, programmes and advertisements. Interwoven throughout are details of both amateur and professional live entertainment and wider aspects of social history, making this a valuable aid to our understanding and a wider knowledge of our national culture.

(Reviewed by Graeme Cruickshank)

Basingtoke Entertained is available from

Stuart Smith, Mercia Sales 100 Wickfield Road, Hackenthorpe, Sheffield, S12 4TT

At £8.95 post free (payable to Mercia Cinema Society)

BASINGSTOKE ENTERTAINED Mervyn Gould, Mercia Cinema Society, 2007

Jeremy Buck – CTA Bulletin Jan/Feb 2008

This new publication from the Mercia Cinema Society is a comprehensive review of the theatres and cinemas in this Hampshire town. Basingstoke has never had a purpose-built theatre, live entertainment taking place in an assortment of converted premises, including the former Corn Exchange which has evolved through a period as the Union Cinemas’ Grand to become today’s Haymarket Theatre. A new concert hall, the Anvil, was opened in 1994. There have been several cinema buildings including, in the 1930s, the Waldorf, the Savoy and the Plaza, which from the pictures here appeared to be fine, modern buildings with art-deco interiors. Alas, they have all now gone and today’s cinema-goers have two multiplexes to visit, the Vue and the Odeon (a rebranded Warner). Mervyn takes us through the fascinating history of these buildings in his usual enjoyable style and there are many good pictures and also reproductions of press advertising and posters. Thoroughly recommended. Read the rest of this entry »