There is something about going to see a film at the cinema. I know you can watch it on the telly, download it to the computer, or buy the DVD cheap from Amazon, but for sheer all round experience you can’t beat the pictures.
In that dark big space the film just takes over. We try to go twice a month and now theatre tickets are zooming through the roof I rather think it will be more movies and less live drama.
Now I have written about the sheer excitement of going to the traditional picture houses which I guess were at their best in the 1930s. http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/01/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in_26.html Then it really was all enveloping from the thick carpets and wide auditorium to the plush seats bright colours and that warm clean smell.
By comparison the multiplex isn’t the same, even though you have more choice, better seats and a whole cornucopia of goodies to eat.
It was while I was thinking about the contrast between the two that I remembered John Lloyd referring to the Pavilion which “amongst a variety of entertainments, presented the bioscope (moving pictures) to a bewildered audience.”
It may have opened in 1904 and despite being described as the Pavilion on the 1907 OS map by 1910 it had become the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens. It stood on Wilbraham Road, just past the bridge where it runs into Buckingham Road.
It was bought in 1909 by H. D. Moorhouse a Manchester solicitor who built up a circuit of cinemas around the city and beyond during the years between the two world wars. Some at least had been theatres before they became picture houses and may well have continued showing live acts alongside films.
Looking at this 1910 photograph of the theatre it is hard to think anyone would be impressed in going there. It has all the appearance of a big wooden shed, which I guess is what it was. Again according to Lloyd it had been built on land which the railway company still intended to use for extra track and so only permitted buildings which could be easily demolished.
But maybe I am being a tad unfair because the monochrome picture cannot convey what must have been a brightly painted building. Even before you went into the theatre you first had to buy a ticket from the pay box which with its wrought and cast iron additions must have brought back memories of seaside piers. And greeting the theatre goer were the picture of the stars they were about to see.
But for me the real value of the picture is the billboard, which not only dates the photograph to the week beginning June 20th 1910 but announces the programme. I have tried tracking down the Whips but have so far been unsuccessful but they will turn up.
There are no pictures of the inside but it would have been a fairly simple affair with wooden seating, the stage at the far end, and wooden floor boards.
But despite still showing films in the years after the First World War, it had been eclipsed by the far more impressive Palais de Luxe Cinema which had been opened in 1915 on Barlow Moor Road close to the tram terminus. Now this really was a cinema, with its glazed white and green tiles on the front and the huge circular windows. But this along with the Rivoli is a story for another time.
Picture; the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens, June 1910from the Lloyd collection and the Palais de Luxe Cinema, A H Downes May 1959, mo9248, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council
In that dark big space the film just takes over. We try to go twice a month and now theatre tickets are zooming through the roof I rather think it will be more movies and less live drama.
Now I have written about the sheer excitement of going to the traditional picture houses which I guess were at their best in the 1930s. http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/01/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in_26.html Then it really was all enveloping from the thick carpets and wide auditorium to the plush seats bright colours and that warm clean smell.
By comparison the multiplex isn’t the same, even though you have more choice, better seats and a whole cornucopia of goodies to eat.
It was while I was thinking about the contrast between the two that I remembered John Lloyd referring to the Pavilion which “amongst a variety of entertainments, presented the bioscope (moving pictures) to a bewildered audience.”
It may have opened in 1904 and despite being described as the Pavilion on the 1907 OS map by 1910 it had become the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens. It stood on Wilbraham Road, just past the bridge where it runs into Buckingham Road.
It was bought in 1909 by H. D. Moorhouse a Manchester solicitor who built up a circuit of cinemas around the city and beyond during the years between the two world wars. Some at least had been theatres before they became picture houses and may well have continued showing live acts alongside films.
Looking at this 1910 photograph of the theatre it is hard to think anyone would be impressed in going there. It has all the appearance of a big wooden shed, which I guess is what it was. Again according to Lloyd it had been built on land which the railway company still intended to use for extra track and so only permitted buildings which could be easily demolished.
But maybe I am being a tad unfair because the monochrome picture cannot convey what must have been a brightly painted building. Even before you went into the theatre you first had to buy a ticket from the pay box which with its wrought and cast iron additions must have brought back memories of seaside piers. And greeting the theatre goer were the picture of the stars they were about to see.
But for me the real value of the picture is the billboard, which not only dates the photograph to the week beginning June 20th 1910 but announces the programme. I have tried tracking down the Whips but have so far been unsuccessful but they will turn up.
There are no pictures of the inside but it would have been a fairly simple affair with wooden seating, the stage at the far end, and wooden floor boards.
But despite still showing films in the years after the First World War, it had been eclipsed by the far more impressive Palais de Luxe Cinema which had been opened in 1915 on Barlow Moor Road close to the tram terminus. Now this really was a cinema, with its glazed white and green tiles on the front and the huge circular windows. But this along with the Rivoli is a story for another time.
Picture; the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens, June 1910from the Lloyd collection and the Palais de Luxe Cinema, A H Downes May 1959, mo9248, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council
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