Pictures from an Eltham bus ........ no.24 ....... the cinema

The top deck of a London bus has to be a pretty neat way of seeing the world below.

Almost finished, 2018

And when it is the same bus at about the same time every day, then you have got yourself a project.

All you need is a camera, and the patience each week to record the same spot, and the rest as they say is Larissa Hamment’s “Pictures from an Eltham bus”.*

In the case of our new cinema, Larissa has been recording the story from before the old Co-op building came down, and has covered its demolition, the clearing of the site and the slow rise of the new picture house, our first for decades.

Back in 2017

Now what I like about todays picture, is that amongst the early morning commuters, she has captured Greggs, open for business, poking out from the edge of the development.

Those, who like me left Eltham a long time ago, will be intrigued by the return of a picture house.

I remember all three from the ABC, to the Eltham Hill Gaumont which was the Odeon and of course my favourite, the one by the roundabout in Well Hall.

I have memories of what I went to see at each and which girl friend I accompanied too all of them.

 Eltham Cinema, 1913

But there was an earlier cinema which was on the corner of the High Street and Westmount Road.

It was opened in 1913 and demolished in 1968 which means I must have seen it countless times on my way to school at Crown Woods but even now it does not register with me.”

During the winter of 1913 had been around  I might well have decided to take myself off to where I could have seen epics like the Battle of Waterloo, stories drawn from great novels like Zola’s Germinal or melodramas loosely based on the Old Testament along with documentaries about nature, disasters at sea and much more.

The Battle of Waterloo, 1913

Its proprietor was a Mr Robert Frederick Bean who was listed in 1913 at 4 Everest Road.

A few years earlier he was in Brockley describing himself as a manufacturer’s agent for lace.

He was 31, had been married for three years and had two children and employed a nurse and a housemaid.

I wish I knew more about them but that is about it although they do seem to have moved around a bit living in Lewisham as well as Brockley and Eltham.

Before the new cinema, 2016

And Tricia had found out more, "it had 1 screen and seated 400  people. It was built in 1912 opened 1913 and closed 1937”.

So we have a rich inheritance of silver screens, which will soon be back.

Location; Eltham

Pictures; the new cinema, 2018, and earlier in 2016-7 from the collection Larissa Hamment, Eltham Cinema, courtesy of Thisiseltham, and screenshot from The Kinematograph Year Book, 1914,

*Pictures from an Eltham bus, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Pictures%20from%20an%20Eltham%20Bus


**Eltham's cinemas, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Eltham%27s%20Cinemas

***Thisiselatham, http://www.thisiseltham.co.uk/