Looking at a Chorlton landmark ………….. that cinema

This is a view of the old cinema which will be familiar, but I wonder how many people stop just to look at its features.

2019

Of course it helps if you are looking out from an upstairs window in the Health Clinic, which is where Andy took the picture.

For perhaps sixty years this scene could only have been observed from the upstairs windows of the houses that ran along the stretch of Manchester Road which is now the car park.

Now I reckon most people know the story of the cinema on Manchester Road. 

It closed in 1962 as the Gaumont having offered feature films, news reels and Saturday Morning Pictures along with choc ices, Kia-Ora and of course the Bee Gees.

1920s

And in the 42 years that it entertained the people of Chorlton it changed its name from the Picture House, to the Savoy and finally ending up as the Gaumont and at one time nearly became The New Magestic Cinema.

But most people will only know it as the Coop Funeral Care and it’s from the staff of the business that I have to thank for this little bit of Chorlton’s history.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; the cinema, 2019, courtesy of Andy Robertson, and in the 1920s from the Lloyd Collection