A bit of Chorlton's cinema past ........... the lost and forgotten Picture House

Now I wasn’t born when The Picture House on Manchester Road thrilled Chorlton’s cinema audiences in the 1920s, and while I could have sat in the six penny stalls  four decades later I never did.

The ceiling, 2019

So I have no idea what the interiors was like, and despite many efforts over the years, the Co-op always turned down my requests to view the upper floor.

And the reason for that was that after years as a workshop for the Co-op funeral business, the floor was deemed unsafe, and I never got the chance.

But more recently Chris Peacock from the Chorlton Community Land Trust went in with a surveyor and took a remarkable set of photographs.

Despite nearly sixty years, there is plenty left which will strike a chord for all those who visited the cinema up to when it closed in 1962.

The Picture Houe, 1920s

The red domed roof, the plaster decorations and some of the other features of the place are still there, as are some of the original electrical fittings.

I won’t slip into the silly stuff of writing about stepping back in time and looking for the ghosts of Chorlton’s own cinematic past, but there is a sense that is what we have here.

More so, because apart from a bit of plaster moulding in the old The Palais De Lux on Barlow Moor Road, nothing now exists of any of our other picture houses.

Plaster detail, 2019

And it is perhaps fitting that it should be this one, which still offers up evidence of the days of going to the “flicks”.  The Picture House/ Savoy/Gaumont was the grandest of the five which offered up adventures, romances and comedies from the early 20th century through to 1991.

The exterior was in grand style and even after it had its Norwegian Wood make over it still looked the part.

So, for all those with fond memories of the place, and especially those who remember the appearance of the Bee Gees on stage, here are a few of the pictures Chris took and Simon Hooton placed on facebook.

Leaving me just to highlight the link to Chorlton Community Land Trust, which are “a group of local residents who are passionate about having a voice and influence to shape the area where we live for the benefit of Chorlton’s diverse community.

The stairs, 2019

We believe in people stepping up to help create a more fair and greener world where housing and urban regeneration works in our interests rather than those of big business”.

So that is it ............ except to say there lots of people who would like the old cinema saved, and perhaps brought back into use as a community hub, and maybe even a cinema, with an option for a permanent exhibition to the Bee Gees.

We shall see.


Location; Chorlton

Pictures;  The interior of the old cinema, from the collectionof Chris Peacock, 2019, The Picture House; 1920, from the Lloyd Collection, and in 1958, A H Downes, m09220, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

As the Gaumont, 1958

* Chorlton Community Land Trust, 
https://chorltonclt.org/index.php/2019/10/02/staying-alive-2019-09-26/?fbclid=IwAR2EmkOwVXnwSNTgfeCbhlAgHfAMJPpiLlQ4Q8XC3-oKYlRwXUpEAEzvbFU