Cinemas and theatres are among my favourite types of urbex spots, so naturally this one was on my radar for years. A year or so ago the modern urbex crowd began flocking to it in the hundreds, acting like it was a fresh discovery, which was funny because a quick search revealed that more subtle urbexers had been sneaking in here since 2007, perhaps earlier. It remained pretty well preserved over the years, but we all know that modern urbexers are weeping cysts on the rectum of humanity, so in the last year or so it's seen a rapid decline.
I'd swung by the cinema before, back when Rachel and I did the Irish Bar, but back then it was impossible to get in, and a little old lady caught me lurking, and demanded to know what I was doing acting all suspicious in that alleyway. I
told her I was looking for a place to pee. I figured that was a more normal explanation than looking for access to a derelict cinema. She gave me a
lighthearted lecture. "You do realise that urinating in public counts as
indecent exposure. There's a McDonalds just down there. Wouldn't you
rather be obese than a registered sex offender?"
A few months later the urbex herd broke into the cinema. It was time for Round Two!
She
has a point. At least if
I'm fat you won't be able to see my cock when I pee in public.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
The cinema is absolutely gorgeous, and there are plenty of older photos to choose from when it comes to showing it as it looked in its glory days. Here the films advertised, "Hello Everybody" with Kate Smith, and "Romance" with Greta Garbo, are all ancient films from the 1930s, so this is probably one of the earliest photographs taken of it.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
If we skip ahead a few decades, we can see that the cinema has changed somewhat. The original title letters have been taken down, and the ABC letters have been fixed to the side. It's now screening Star Trek- The Wrath of Khan, which dates this photograph as 1982.
But if anyone is interested in the city itself and its history, it's worth skipping back a century and a bit. Prior to the cinema being constructed, this was the site of a number of shops, and a gruesome death in 1868. The details are vague, but a chap called John Bradbury had a firework shop on the site of the cinema, and he was seen fleeing his shop, and throwing a lit firework into the street. Soon after, his shop exploded with fireworks flying everywhere. It must have been quite spectacular to see, unless of course you happened to be John Bradbury, in which case that's your livelihood gone down the toilet.
Bradbury claimed that he spotted a firework inexplicably lit, and he'd panicked and hurled it into the street. How his shop then blew up is a bit of a mystery. Were other fireworks also lit up? Did the one he threw fly back at the shop? Either way, once the fire was extinguished, the charred remains of fifteen-year-old butchers assistant, Christopher Kelly, were uncovered in the wreckage. What he was doing there is also unexplained.
Alas, despite claims that the cinema is haunted, paranormal investigators on Youtube have yet to make contact with Christopher Kelly. Probably because they can't read about him on Wikipedia beforehand.
There are photos of these shops, but none dating back quite that far.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
The banner above the shop says "Building going down before Xmas. Stock must be cleared."
It's a closing down sale, heralding the buildings demolition and the cinema's construction in 1931.
Slipping inside, we can see the once grand entrance. Nearly a hundred years ago, crowds of people would have poured through these doors. The ticket office would have been to the left as they were coming in. There's not much left of it, but it is visible in this photo from 1986.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
So as one walks through the door, the tickets are on the left and the ice cream is on the right.
The ice cream bar has seen better days.
Evidently it served hot dogs too!
And here is the old popcorn stand.
A load of old cinema seats have been piled up in the corner, as if to be cleared out, and on the wall is an anti-vaccine sign from the Covid days. I'm absolutely at a loss to explain its presence here. The cinema closed in 1998 and was last used for anything legitimate in 2016. Did people decide to protest the Covid vaccine inside a derelict cinema, where nobody could see? That makes absolutely no sense.
Although my crackhead neighbour is an anti-vaxxer and he once came at me with a baseball bat when I asked him to turn his music down because I couldn't hear Netflix over his rave. He also told me that he can't get headphones because they're "too dangerous." So let's be honest, as much as I like to keep an open mind, not every anti-vaxxer is coming from a sane place. Especially on the stuff that we've been vaccinating for yonks, like Polio and Tuberculosis. But I personally think my own anti-vaccine stance is the most logical. Why pay eighteen years child support when I can just pay three?
But I digress...
I gotta be honest, I absolutely love old cinemas. Just think how many people have walked these halls before me. This place first opened its doors in 1931, and in that time thousands of people will have come through here. And there's a reason why I like leisure sites more so than industrial or residential. This place was a social hub. So many happy memories have been had here. Families came here. Groups of friends came here. There are probably elderly couples out there who came here when they first began dating as youngsters. That sort of stuff just blows my mind.
On the stairs I found that the cinema had one last occupant, a family of pigeons! Typically they're only a problem when they're flapping around everywhere in confined spaces. This one was okay. She wasn't going anywhere, because she had a nest to protect.
I zoomed in for this because I didn't want to disturb them too much, but squirming around in the nest, next to its two unborn siblings, is a little pigeon hatchling. I didn't stop too long. Mother Pigeon was terrified but she'd also made up her mind that she was sticking around, and also I've heard that pigeons will actually abandon their young if they smell too much of humans, so I decided to keep my time on the stairs brief.
The stairs brought me out into the main balcony seating area, which was dusty and pitch black. But that's nothing a long exposure and a darn good torch can't handle. Check it out!
The cinemas construction was a duel effort, the exterior being designed by the architect Alfred Ernest Shennan, while the interior was designed by William Riddell Glen. They apparently found it quite challenging to squeeze their designs onto a limited plot of land, but they seem to have done a good job. What I really like about these old buildings, and the era where architects were proud of their work, is all the little details. I didn't notice at the time because it was pitch black, but at the very bottom of the balcony seating, right before the fire exits, are wall panels depicting New York skyscrapers, transplanted into a mythical landscape with a bridge over a river, and a bird flying. I wish I had noticed so I could get a better shot of them.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
This vintage photo shows that a few changes have been made. Above the proscenium (the big square thing that frames the screen) are a load of decorative nobbly bits that are no longer there. In my images, the plinths that they sat on are still there, but one doesn't really notice how weird they look without decorative nobbly bits until one sees them as they were.
Apparently it was felt that William Riddell Glen had gotten a bit carried away with his interior and needed to tone it down a notch. Some aspects of the interior, including the proscenium nobs, were removed in an attempt to de-clutter the area.
I don't really see the logic there. It's typically quite dark in a cinema. I highly doubt anyone ever left this place saying "I couldn't get into the movie. I just kept being distracted by those nobbly bits near the ceiling."
But the thing is, people often misunderstand just how amazing cinemas were all those decades ago. When this place opened in 1931, cinemas weren't what they are today. Arguably it was a more meaningful experience. Today everything is at our fingertips. There's a streaming platform for everything, legal or otherwise. As a child I remember movies coming out and saying "I'll have to get that when it comes out on DVD." But in the 1930s nobody was saying that. They weren't even waiting for it to come out on VHS. They didn't even have televisions! The cinema was the only place where they could see the movie, and once it was gone, it was gone for good. That made the entire cinema experience so much grander and more important.
Unfortunately it was perhaps always doomed to fizzle out. Even as early as 1954, the introduction of cinemascope technology caused issues for this place, as its proscenium didn't lend itself easily to the new widescreen format and needed to get a new screen installed. But it soldiered on, nonetheless. In 1957 they gained a lot of media attention by holding a film premiere for "These Dangerous Years," a movie about a gang leader who is conscripted into the army and surprises everyone by actually doing quite well. The stars of the movie showed up, along with the mayor, and a ginormous crowd. The reason for the media attention was that film premieres were usually London's thing, but as the reporter said "Maybe this idea of provincial premieres will catch on. After
all, what's London got that the North hasn't?"
There's plenty of dust all over the seats here, and the local kids have decided to write random words on them. They're building themselves up to multi-syllabic words, they promise. Give them time.
Up above, we can see that the ceiling has seen better days. There was once a chandelier here, which appears in older urbex reports but allegedly came crashing down in 2022 and somehow isn't where it would have landed. The cable still hangs down, but it's no longer attached to anything. Someone's had that. Weird thing to nick, but people are pretty weird. I mean, they like Gogglebox, for fucks sake. People pay TV license to watch other people watch TV. Of course they steal chandeliers.
But this is the view that would have been enjoyed by thousand of people for nearly a century. The curtain still hangs, albeit tatty and partially set on fire. The seats are still here. The interior decor is almost exactly as it was when the cinema opened in 1931, just with a few decades of decay.
And what's really interesting is that this cinema was the first place to feature the triangular ABC cinema logo, albeit in a much different form. It first appeared on the program leaflet for the very first screening at this place, a movie called "Almost a Honeymoon."
(Image not mine, obviously)
It's strange to think that whoever designed this had unknowingly produced the graphic that would evolve into the company logo in the decades to come.
The mayor attended the opening night, and a famous organist, Reginald Foort, operated the cinemas organ that produced music during intervals. The organ was apparently kept in a room above the proscenium, and it if you look closely you can see that the sloped top above the curtains does have holes for the sound to escape through.
The first manager of the cinema was a chap called Ernest Lundy, and he looks like he's heard one too many people chew obnoxiously loudly on popcorn.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
I did a quick search, and I found out that he actually died in 1934, at the age of 56, only a few years after the cinema opened! That's a bit depressing.
I also found a photo of his team!
(Photo not mine, obviously)
To bring a more positive story to the cinema staff, the lady third from the right on the bottom row is named Vera, and she ended up marrying one of the projectionists.
Apparently the cinema staff did have something of a hookup culture. The hours were unsociable, requiring late nights and weekend work, and working over the holiday periods, so their work colleagues became their social life, and humans did as humans do, and shot their DNA into each other. It did become a bit of a pattern that if there was a break up, one of the crew would end up seeking employment elsewhere, so management did clamp down on workplace romance. But of course, their efforts were in vain.
The cinema allegedly had a bit of a rat problem, and decided to solve this by getting a pet cat. Initially the cinema cat was named Smudge, but once Smudge retired, they got another one named Candy.
Most of this intel came from the projectionist, Derek, who joined the cinema team in 1962 and stayed until his retirement. He talks at great length about the cinema in various interviews. For him, it was the highlight of his life. Here he is sat on the roof.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Let's slip inside the projection room and see what remains...
The projectors are long gone, but there are still a few bits and bobs lying around.
Back in the 1930s, and long into the late 20th Century, being a cinema projectionist was a proud profession. There was a lot of work involved. The projectionist had to entertain hundreds of people, and deal with any malfunctions and blunders. It was all done by hand, whereas modern cinemas are much less physical, with digital projection systems instead of mechanical. Some cinemas are even getting rid of the human projectionist altogether, making it truly a dying trade.
Naturally, the projectionists had a lot of fun. Their job was to put on a good show, and that didn't just involve projecting a movie, but controlling the sound, among other things. When the Exorcist first screened in 1973, they turned up the volume on the scary bits, and during other horror movie screenings they often lynched mannequins from the roof. That is, until the head fell off one and shattered on the ground below. Whoops.
In all honesty, the Exorcist sounds like it was a great time to visit the cinema. According to cinemagoers in 1973, the screening here was heavily protested by Christians, who lovingly told all of the people queuing up that they would go to Hell...
... for watching a movie about a priest trying to exorcise a demon?
Nothing is more bonkers than Christian logic.
After my last church blog, where I outright said that I don't see the point in worshiping someone who hates us all, I did actually get some backlash from religious folks, who told me that "the bible is, cover to cover, Gods desire to have a positive relationship with man." I responded with a line from Deuteronomy 20:16 where God commands the Israelites "not to let a soul remain alive" among the indigenous inhabitants of Canaan, and asked my religious chums what part of Gods desire to have a positive relationship with man included commanding genocide.
I was blocked. If you ever want to annoy a God Botherer, just read the bible to them.
But I digress.
This appears to be a former restroom, with a very dusty mirror and a little platform. But littered all over the floor I found heaps of cinema tickets!
Honestly, this is such a cool find. The cinema has been ransacked and trashed, but here we have genuine relics from 25 years ago. That's amazing!
But now onto the most amazing part of any abandoned building, the toilet.
Hmm... Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs!
This room was clearly being lived in, so I didn't stop for too long. As well as the sleeping bag, there were clothes and other personal belongings.
There's also some methadone! Evidently this is prescribed to the poor occupant of this room. It's really quite sad.
Time to head below the balcony seats!
Originally this area would have been full of rows of seats, and it's still possible to see the horizontal lines across the ground where they would have been. These seats would have faced the main proscenium in the 1930s, but as the decades passed, the cinema began to suffer as larger multi-screen cinemas were popping up all over the place, essentially giving the more vintage cinemas competition that they weren't physically equipped to keep up with.
The solution in 1982 was to divide the bottom area with an ugly breezeblock wall and convert this area into a multiscreen cinema, with the main balcony seats above being for a large screen, and two smaller screens being down here. Now they could finally keep up with their competitors. It is odd that the breezeblock wall seems to have since disappeared, despite it showing up in earlier
urbex posts. Someone at some point has dismantled it.
Derek the projectionist says that installing two additional screens was the worst thing they ever did for the cinema. It took away that classic cinema vibe that many people still enjoyed.
But alas, such decisions are made by those who favour profit over the classic cinema vibe, and so the alterations went ahead. They closed for a bit while the work went ahead and then opened with a specially produced short called The Cinema Strikes Back, which was designed to win people over after their brief closure. After that, the first three movies to be shown simultaneously were Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Pink Floyd's The Wall, and Grease.
From here we can see that the architects designed these ornamental false theatre boxes, deliberately to make the cinema resemble the theatres of the Victorian era. And just to the side, we can see some of those New York skyscraper details that I totally failed to notice and photograph properly.
And here we have the curtain, tatty and burned, but still retaining a vibe of its former grandeur. It's sad to see it like this.
By 1995 it became apparent that installing multiple screens wasn't enough to save the cinema. It went through a brief period of showing art house films, but that wasn't enough. In 1998 it finally closed for good. Derek the projectionist, probably the longest lasting staff member at this point, chose Casablanca to be the final movie, and they charged £1 for entry. It was apparently quite a hit. And then the cinema closed its doors forever.
The cinema was then purchased by a brewery who wanted to turn it into a nightspot, but those plans never came to fruition and the cinema just sat here and gathered dust ever since.
I think some of this equipment may have been used to lift the organ console during the intervals when it was played, but I can't be certain. It's still cool seeing vintage machinery still intact.
I even love the vintage fire exit signs. Everything just has a really awesome vintage vibe.
Above the proscenium are a number of rooms. One of these was definitely the organ chamber, but despite rumours that it was still here with all its pipes, it was in fact removed in 1954 when a cinemascope screen was installed.
There are loads of letters on the floor though. These are the original letters that would have been fixed above the entrance to advertise the movies back in the day. These can be seen in this retro image of the cinemas exterior.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
As you can see, the cinema is now advertising movies for three different screens, and has also renamed itself "The Cannon." The movies advertised date this image as 1989. It's kinda bonkers that the letters are still here in this room.
Various plans have been proposed for the cinema. In 2007, someone wanted to turn it into a boutique hotel, and Chanel 4 wanted it to be their headquarters before the council declined and forced them to get a cinema in Leeds instead.
In 2016 plans were made to turn it into a music venue with bars and restaurants but so far these haven't come to fruition. The cinema did get one last gasp of usage in 2016 though, when it was opened for the local art festival. For many this was an amazing opportunity to see inside. After all, an entire generation had been spawned and was approaching adulthood in the years since its closure. For many the cinema was just this big mysterious street ornament that people knew nothing about.
So as part of the arts festival there was a creative writing workshop held here, where visitors would use the building and the things inside it as a starting point for short stories. The stories were apparently published online afterwards, but a I can't find any. Given that I've seen urbex posts from 2007 that show the dividing breezeblock walls that separated the cinema screens, I assume that it was in 2016 that they were removed, presumably to revert the cinema back to its authentic self for the event.
There's an interesting looking fire exit here. A doorway onto the street can only be accessed by ladder.
And if we look down, we can see that the ladder is only accessible by gong down another ladder. The bottom is a bit flooded though, but I decided to go down anyway and sit in the shopping trolley, so that I could keep my feet dry when I snapped up the room that's down there.
There we go.
And much to my delight, the black door on the left leads to a little tunnel system under the cinema.
This is absolutely amazing. Cramped, but amazing.
There's one final place to check out, and that's the roof.
The view up here is pretty amazing, in spite of the road works. We're right in the city centre here, making it an absolute travesty that such a building is going to waste.
And that's all I've got. On my last visit to this city, which you can read about 62 blogs from now because my backlog is huge, the cinema was sealed up again, and impossible to access. Of course, it's only a matter of time before some wazzock breaks in. Earlier this year there was an attempt at arson, so hopefully the powers-that-be are being somewhat more vigilant now. I absolutely love this cinema and it would be amazing to see it put back to some sort of positive use.
For my next blog, I'm checking out a gorgeous derelict chapel, and then some kind of Aztec temple. In the meantime, to make sure you don't miss any of the 62 blogs I have scheduled between this one and the adventure I had last Sunday, the best way to stay updated is to follow my social media. It's not a guaranteed method because they're all algorithmic hellscapes, but try it anyway. I'm active on Instagram, Vero, Threads, Reddit, Twitter and last and definitely least, Facebook.
Thanks for reading!
