Down at the Savoy Cinema in 1937 on Manchester Road watching Road to Glory

Now back in the summer of 1937 I could have had three cinemas to choose from here in Chorlton and of these the most impressive was the Savoy on Manchester Road which had opened in 1920 as the Picture House before being renamed the Savoy when it was leased to the Savoy Cinemas and later became the Gaumont.

And in the summer of 1937 for three days I could have gone and seen Road to Glory made the year before by Howard Hawks which told the story of trench life during the Great War through the lives of a French regiment and included as you would expect a tangled “love interest” between a nurse and two officers.

I am not sure it would have appealed but at least I know what was on offer and that is thanks to Peter McLoughlin who shared this film bill with me.

I doubt that there are many of these still knocking around.  After all they are the sort of thing which you pick and then discard but this one has survived it is a wonderful insight into a night at the “flicks.”

The obvious starting point are the films themselves and in time I will look them all up and in the process get something of an idea of what the cinema going public were being offered back then.

For modern audiences the frequency of the shows will also be a revelation.  

When I was growing up in the 1950s you got I think a week of the same show, but two decades earlier and programmes changed more regularly which I guess is both a recognition of the number of films being churned out but also that people went to the pictures more than once a week.

Not that this should be much of a surprise.  In an age before the telly the pictures offered a nights entertainment which included the film and a newsreel and was all done with style.

The old flea pits still existed but the big purpose built cinemas of the 1920s and more especially the 30’s gave you a sense of luxury which started with the uniformed doorman and continued with that plush auditorium which was light and bright and had a distinctive smell which I guess was a mix of those thick carpets and the floor polish and much later there was the smell of the hot dogs slowly cooking in a corner beyond the box office.

And the picture houses were warm which on a cold winter’s night was another attraction and on one of those dark nights they would be one of the only buildings which were lit up and acted a beacon as well as a promise of a good night ahead.

All of which brings me back to that film bill and the simple observation that you should always be careful about what you are going to throw away.

Pictures; film bill for the Savoy ABC, 1937 courtesy of Peter McLoughlin, and the Picture House later the Savoy, 1922, from the Lloyd Collection.

Standing in front of the Rivoli on Barlow Moor Road sometime in 1936

Now I can’t be certain when this photograph of the Rivoli on Barlow Moor Road was taken but given that the cinema opened in November 1936 and closed because of bomb damage four years later it will be sometime between the two.

And there are other clues to a possible date.

The first is the film Anthony Adverse which was released in the November of 1936 and will have been showing in suburban cinemas within the year.

It was a dreadful film based on an impossible plot heavy in morality and set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

That said it featured infidelity, a mistress of Napoleon and the remorse of a slave trader who turned away from “that odious traffic in human flesh” and was set in lush tropical surroundings and magnificent European palaces.

Added to which it had the young Olivia de Havilland who at the age of 20 was starring in her fourth film having already acted with Errol Flynn in Captain Blood and who within the year would star in The Charge of the Light Brigade and later still The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and that all time weepy that was Gone With the Wind.

The film had also picked up four Academy Awards so I guess had we been here back then we would have gone along.

And that might have been the motive for Mr Clarke of 83 Clarence Road to take the photograph and add it to his portfolio of images he marketed as picture postcards.*

After all if you had seen the film or just visited the cinema you might just be prompted to pick this card out of all the rest next time you wanted to send a message which is what postcard manufactures banked on.

Commercial photographers with an eye to what would sell toured local streets taking pictures of individual houses and offering them to the residents and when that market dried up offered them to postcard companies.

In the case of Mr Clarke he did both, producing the cards with his imprint and selling them to the local shops, including Mr Lloyd’s on Upper Chorlton Road and Mrs Burt’s stationers on Wilbraham Road.

He was active during the 1920s and into the 30s and produced a series of book marks for the opening of Central Ref.

By 1940 he “re-located the family home and ceased making his living solely from photography as a 1944 wedding certificate shows him as an Inland Revenue clerk residing at 5, Keppel Rd.”**

But during his time as a commercial photographer he produced some fascinating pictures of Chorlton, of which this is one that I have never seen before.

And for all those who have debated the actual location of the cinema there is no doubting that Mr Clarke’s picture nails it firmly on the spot now occupied by K.F.C.

What I also like is the detail of the two kiosks on either side of the entrance and that the Rivoli is one of those new picture houses which have fully embraced the motor car as the cark park sign indicates.

So that pretty much is that.

Picture; the Rivoli circa 1936-40 from the collection of Peter McLoughlin

*Harold Clarke, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Harold%20Clarke

**Tony Goulding, grandson

Chorlton’s palace of varieties …………. part one ....... The Chorlton Pavilion and Winter Gardens

Now there is always more to find out about our old theatres and cinemas, and so it is with the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens, which is an old favourite of mine. *

It was situated just over the railway bridge on Wilbraham Road on what is now Morrison’s petrol station.

Until now I had just one photograph and a few memories from Ann Love’s dad who saw Tom Mix the American film star in a western sometime in the early 1920s

But in the space of a few days there is much more.  I now have a detailed description of what it was like, evidence of its chequered history and the names of those who walked its boards and the plays they performed in.

The actual date of its opening is still a little hazy.  I thought it opened in 1904, but I can be certain it was up and running by1906 when a Walter Broadhurst of 71 Nicolas Road applied for a license to put on shows at the “Chorlton Pavilion adjoining Chorlton Railway Station”, which were followed up by yearly applications thereafter.

In the June of 1907, The Stage carried the notice that Messrs. Levy and Cardwell were performing their “musical Comedy, Little Paul Pry” with an appeal from the managers of the Theatre wanting “Musical Comedies, Burlesques Opera Light Drama” for slots in July into September asserting that “Good Companies do well.  Packed nightly”. **

And that was all to be expected, given that there had been a housing boom in Chorlton which from the 1880s had seen the area around the Three Banks go from open fields to rows of houses, which catered for the “middling people” who worked in town in a range of professional, clerical and entrepreneurial businesses.

These were the very people with money in their pockets who also supported a range of cultural and sporting groups and clubs and will have been a ready audience for a place of varieties.
And this was not lots on a group of businessmen who in 1910 founded the Chorlton Entertainments Ltd.  Their prospective argued “that there was a want of a high-class theatre and place of entertainment in Chorlton a district which is well known”.

To this end they had bought the old theatre for £700 including the “furniture, fixtures, electrical and other fittings, scenery” and “the goodwill attached to the said Pavilion and to the business”

It was an ambitious plan which saw the addition of land laid out as a "Winter Gardens”, which was incorporated into the new name of the Chorlton Pavilion and Winter Gardens”.
And the business plan fully recognised that the site was “in the centre of the populous and growing township of Chorlton-cum-Hardy adjoins the railway station and  is within two minutes’ walk of the Manchester electric tramways [and] within easy access of Moss Side, Fallowfield, Withington, Didsbury, Old Trafford, Stretford, Sale and Urmston, with an estimated population of one hundred and fifty thousand”

Its five directors lived in Whalley Range, Levenshulme and Gorton, and listed their professions as broker, Assurance manager, supply company manager and solicitor’s clerk, and included as one of its auditors Mr. H. D. Morrhouse who was later to establish a popular chain of cinemas of which the Pavilion would later be part of.

But I will close with a description of the newly opened theatre from March 1910.
“It is situated close to the railway station, and is a fine, commodious, and spacious building, standing within its own grounds, which are laid out as gardens; hence the appellation Winter Gardens.  

The building is of corrugated iron on a brick foundation, the exterior being painted a green colour, whilst the entrance is plain, and effective in a white fibrous plaster, with several rows of electric lamps, which gives it a bright appearance when it is lit up.  The seating capacity is a 1,000.

The orchestra stalls and stalls, which are now fitted with tip-up seats, upholstered in crimson velvet, can accommodate 500 persons.  

The pit and promenade seat another 500.  The stage has an opening of 23 ft., and extends from the footlights to exterior wall, 28 ft. 6 in.  There are four commodious dressing -rooms, the ladies on one side and the gentlemen on the other.  

The dressing rooms are spacious and supplied with every convenience and can be heated as required.  

There is a complete electrical installation, and the heating is on the Radium principle.  For the opening week Miss Florence Baine’s company with Miss. Lancashire, Limited, have been secured and on a Monday a house packed in all parts gave a demonstrative welcome to the popular farce, Miss Madge Grey as the blunt Lancashire Lass”. ***

It was also the venue for shows by our own Chorlton Operatic Society and hosted at least one large political meeting by the Unionist Party in 1913.

Tomorrow; dark days, strange stories and its time as our first cinema

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Chorlton Pavilion and Winter Gardens, circa 1906, from the Lloyd Collection

*Chorlton Pavilion and Winter Gardens, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20Theatre%20and%20Winter%20Gardens

**The Stage, June 27th, 1907

***The Chorlton Entertainments Ltd, Manchester Guardian, January 8th, 1910

A ghost cinema and a family home ……. Barlow Moor Road …. 1962

There will be plenty of people who instantly recognise the scene.

We are on Barlow Moor Road, and for many the large impressive building with its tiled faced will bring back memories of the cinema.

For this was the Palais de Luxe, which was opened in 1914, changed its name to the Palace around 1946, and closed  eleven years later.

After which the building was owned by Radio Rentals, and then sometime before 1969 it was taken over by Tesco and traded as such, until 1974.

This I know because of a reference in the planning records which record “Continuance of use of radio and television service centre as supermarket”.

Now given that it was already trading as a Tesco store, I think this might have been the moment when it was sold on to Hanburys, which was a chain of stores across the north which had its origins, when Jeremiah Hanbury opened a small store in 1889 in Market Street, Farnworth, selling butter and bacon.

Forty years later the business was bought by Bolton wholesale grocers E.H. Steele Ltd, and in 1997 the 31 Hanbury’s stores in the north west were acquired by United Norwest Co-op.

But for many it will always be the picture palace, and carried the distinction of being our first purpose built cinema, having seen off the  Chorlton Pavilion and Winter Gardens on Wilbraham Road, which in turn had done for the Picturedrome on Longford Road.

I missed it by just 20 or so years, but have written about it over the years along with all the Chorlton picture houses, and even uncovered the remains of the plaster features above the screen which still survived in the upstairs area of the former supermarket.*

And there will also be many who can reel off the various retail businesses which inhabited the building to the left, and which was once home to Douglas Cook who lived there in the 1940s and remembers, “living in the detached house right next to the cinema, on the corner of Malton Avenue and Barlow Moor Road, no 477, so the cinema wall formed one side of our garden. I went to the Burnage High School for Boys and also the Wilbraham School of Music in High Lane.”

And that I think is enough for now.

Location; Chorlton

Picture a ghost cinema and a family home, 1962-3801.4, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Hanburys shopping bag, courtesy of Catherine Brownhill

*Chorlton Cinemas, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20cinemas

Down on Manchester Road with our poshest cinema

Now you know you were being treated when the cinema was the Savoy, or as it later became known the Gaumont on Manchester Road.

The Picture House, 1920, later the Savoy and Gaumont

I had always thought this was the case, after it was larger and more impressive looking that its two rivals which were the Pavilion on Wilbraham Road and the Palais De Luxe on Barlow Moor Road.

And by 1928 it’s only challenger in Chorlton was the Palais which was smaller and older.

All I wanted was confirmation of the Gaumont’s premier position, and it came today from the Kinematograph Yearbook for 1928.

The Savoy, 1928

I now have four in the collection, starting with the one for 1914, and running through to 1928, 1929 and 1947.

There will be more, but for now I have just the four, and it is the 1928 book which dishes up the evidence that it felt confident in charging 8d to 1s. 6d, for admission while the Palais came in at 6d to 1s. 3d.

The Palais De Luxe, 1928

So, on the nights you might want to impress someone special, that “specialness” was reflected in what you were prepared to pay.

Of course, the choice of film might still have something to do with it, but I reckon that that all important first date or anniversary would tip the balance in favour of the Savoy.

The Palais De Lux, 1925

Later in the 1930s, came the last of our cinemas, up by the park, and it outlasted the Savoy by a few decades.

All of which makes it an exciting idea that there are those who want to buy up the former cinema and transform it into a community hub.

Now that would be fun.

Location; Chorlton,

Pictures; the Picture House, 1920, later renamed the Savoy and later still the Gaumont, from the Lloyd Collection, listing details from the 1928, Kinematograph Yearbook, and the Palais De Luxe cinema, circa 1928, Charles Ireland, GD10-07-04-6-13-01 Courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives

Chorlton’s first cinema, a Molotov cocktail and a shed load of new stories

The story of Chorlton has just started a new chapter and it is all down to a phone call from Mr Hollinworth.

We all know that you can never close a book on the history of a place because there will always be a fresh discovery, a new set of memories and an unseen batch of photographs which add to the picture and even contradict what we all held to be the truth.

Looking at the petrol station, 1961

So until recently I had no idea that during the Great War there had been two Red Cross hospitals operating in Chorlton or that our first cinema had originally been a variety hall situated on Wilbraham Road.

And now there is the promise of a lot more from Mr Hollinworth who phoned me today after having read the blog.

He was born in Chorlton in 1928 and lived on Silverdale Road until 1951, and has a vivid set of memories of the area.

These include the Manchester Blitz, the bomb that fell behind the air raid shelter on Wilbraham Road and the bomb crater which for a day became a venue for a man with a piano and an impromptu choir to see patriotic songs as a gesture of defiance.

And it is these small bits of history which in their way are as revealing as any academic account of the war and of course are the ones that often get lost.

Our first cinema, circa 1906

So I was intrigued when Edward also told me of the Molotov cocktails that were stored behind the advertising hoardings on the railway bridge which he and his friends were determined to use if German tanks ever rumbled along Wilbraham Road.

But the jewel in the conversation was the story of his father’s garage on the corner of Wilbraham and Buckingham Roads.*

Today this is the site of the shiny new Morrison’s petrol station but once it was home to our first cinema.

This was the Pavilion which had been the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens which opened in 1904 and became part of H D Moorhouse chain of picture houses three years later.

It offered that usual mix of exciting silent movies from the comedies of Chaplin and Keaton to the daring exploits of Tom Mix and stories of the place have yet to fade from living memory.

That said those memories are second hand because the cinema closed in the 1920s in the face of stiff competition from the newly built Palais de Luxe on Barlow Moor Road and the even newer and far grander picture house on Manchester Road.

Building the new petrol station, 2014

But the actual date of its closure remained unclear until now.

I now know that it had gone by 1924 to make way for the garage and petrol station owned by Edward’s father who had lost a leg aged just 20 in the Great War.

Along with the petrol station there were a set of lock up garages running along the railway fronting Buckingham Road and both the lockups and the petrol station had been built by Edward’s grandfather.

The business was sold in 1951 but the original 1920s building was still there eleven years later and looking at that 1962 picture it is possible to pick out evidence of the old theatre which judging from more recent photographs was a very substantial building.

So there you have it, a chance phone call and a whole new set of stories have been set in motion.

Pictures; the petrol station in 1962 by A Landers, m18047, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pas the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens, later the Pavilion 1910 from the Lloyd collection, and the construction of the new Morrison’s petrol station, 2014 from the collection of Andy Robertson

*The story of a garage, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20garage

Additional information Edward Hollinworth

On finding Mr Hanburys forgotten shopping bag ...... tales from a Chorlton supermarket

Now a little bit of our collective past bounced across my screen in the form of an old shopping bag from Hanburys.

A treasure from Hanburys, date unknown

It was sent over by Catherine Brownhill who found it in the attic, adding, “Look what turned up amongst a pile of old photos whilst having a COVID-19 loft clear out”.

For those who don’t know, Hanburys was the supermarket which occupied what until recently was the Co-op store on Barlow Moor Road.

Now, I liked Hannburys.

It was a no-nonsense place, which dispensed with elegance, and panache for branded goods sold a little cheaper than elsewhere.

At Christmas its loyalty card was just that ……. a tiny piece of card which was stamped every time you shopped there during the months of December.

And like Kingy across the road it was viewed with affection by those who shopped there, and on a busy day there might be a few who remembered when the building had been our first purpose-built cinema.

The cinema, 1928

It opened in the May of  1914, as the  Palais de Luxe, changing its name to the Palace around 1946, and closed in 1957.

After which the building was owned by Radio Rentals, and then sometime before 1969 it was taken over by Tesco and traded as such, until 1974.

This I know because of a reference in the planning records which record “Continuance of use of radio and television service centre as supermarket”.*

Now given that it was already trading as a Tesco store, I think this might have been the moment when it was sold on to Hanburys, which was a chain of stores across the north which had its origins, when Jeremiah Hanbury opened a small store in 1889 in Market Street, Farnworth, selling butter and bacon.

Forty years later the business was bought by Bolton wholesale grocers E.H. Steele Ltd, and in 1997 the 31 Hanbury’s stores in the north west were acquired by United Norwest Co-op.**

There will be those who are sniffy at featuring a shopping bag from a lost supermarket, but it is history, and what is more it may have been one of those bags which Hanburys started giving away in that short period when we were profligate with plastic bags.

And here I need some help, because I am trying to remember whether Hanburys followed the practice of Safeway and offered you big brown paper bags, which were sturdy but came without handles.

The empty building, 2019

And now the site is just an empty bit of cleared land.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Hanburys shopping bag, courtesy of Catherine Brownhill, the closed Co-op store, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Palais De Luxe cinema, circa 1928, Charles Ireland, GD10-07-04-6-13-01 courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives 

*Manchester City Council Planning Portal, https://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=ZZZZZZBCXT638&activeTab=summary

**List of supermarket chains in the UK, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_the_United_Kingdom

When Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford visited Chorlton ….. our own palace of varieties ….… part two

Now the ambitious plans for Chorlton’s own music hall began well.

The theatre, circa 1910

The Chorlton Pavilion was opened sometime around 1906, continued with the addition of a ‘Winter Garden’ four years later, and underwent further alterations in 1912.

From the out set, it appeared to draw in the locals, with the Stage reporting that “For the opening week Miss Florence Baine’s company with Miss. Lancashire, Limited, have been secured and on a Monday a house packed in all parts gave a demonstrative welcome to the popular farce, Miss Madge Grey as the blunt Lancashire lass, Miss Ellen Thompson, kept the house in roars of laughter, and was a great favorite.  Miss Maria Lorenzi made an effective Eva Lancashire”. *

Theatre and Winter Gardens, circa 1910

But despite all that promise something didn’t quite go right, and in July 1914, the Manchester Guardian carried the notice that the building was up for sale, including “the WOODEN ERECTION, with corrugated roof, forming the theatre; Pay Huts, about 200 Upholstered Tip-up Seats, 28 Forms with backs; Scenery, Limelight’s, Fire Extinguisher Apparatus , the whole of the Electric Light Fittings, Carpets, Curtains, Mats Rugs and other Effects.”*

It seems that by then the Pavilion had already moved away from a palace of varieties and entered the new shiny world of films.

This I know because in 1913 it was listed as the “Chorlton Pavilion Theatre, Wilbraham Road, seating 800, and owned by Chorlton Pavilion Theatre Co Ltd”. ***

Still from the Battle of Waterloo, 1913

It might of course also continue as a live theatre, and the Chorlton Pavilion Theatre Co Ltd, may have been a subsidiary of Chorlton Entertainments Ltd who had opened the building in 1910.

Or they may have been separate companies.  At present I haven’t been able to locate a history of either.

What I do know is that our own Chorlton Operatic Society used the building for performances of their production Dorothy in the April of 1914.

Still from the film, Sixty Years a Queen, 1913

Sadly, two years later the building was up for sale again during the summer of 1916 and despite several attempts the sale was withdrawn in the September of that year.

The rest as they say is unclear.  At some stage it was part of the cinema chain owned by H.D. Morehouse, but I don’t know when that was.

It maybe that the alterations in 1912 were to adapt it to cinema use.

All of which means that there will have to be many hours spent in Central Ref looking through the entertainment’s pages of the local newspapers for references to the cinema.

I thought it had closed in the 1930s but according Edward Hollingworth, it had gone by 1924 to make way for the garage and petrol station owned by Edward’s father who had lost a leg aged just 20 in the Great War.

Along with the petrol station there were a set of lock up garages running along the railway fronting Buckingham Road and both the lockups and the petrol station had been built by Edward’s grandfather.

Still from the film Tess of the D'Ubervilles, 1913

The business was sold in 1951 but the original 1920s building was still there eleven years later and looking at that 1962 picture it is possible to pick out evidence of the old theatre which judging from more recent photographs was a very substantial building.

And that I thought was that, but as you do, just as I was finishing the research, I came across one last little story, concerning the Boys’ Highland Company who appeared at the Pavilion I the November of 1907.

The troupe consisted of 16-18 boys, who despite their name all came from the Nottingham area and during their period of engagement in Chorlton had stayed in B&Bs in the township.  Five had resided with a Mrs. Shaw in Cheltenham Road who reported the children for being “infested with vermin”.

 At the subsequent court case brought by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the troupe’s manager was found guilty of neglect and was fined £5 and costs. ****

Leaving me to ponder on what to say next.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; The Chorlton Pavilion and Winter Gardens, circa 1910, from the Lloyd Collection, remaining pictures from films showing in 1913, from The Kinematograph Year Book, Program Diary and Directory for 1914

*The Stage, March 31, 1910

**Chorlton Entertainments Ltd, Manchester Guardian, July 14, 1910

***The Kinematograph Year Book, Program Diary and Directory for 1914

****A Boys’ Band Singular Charge of Child Neglect, Manchester Guardian, November 13, 1907

The Art of Brick ... no. 2 .... sunshine and a cinema

The side of the Picture House cinema was never really designed to be seen or admired.

The Art of Brick .... The Picture House, 2025

True it was there running alongside Nicolas Road but I guess for most people it was just where you might have to wait in the queue for a popular film.

The Picture House, 1920

If you were near the fornt you would be under the ornate glass and iron canopy, and if not so lucky you got to stand under the more basic shelter that extended down the enrire side of the picture house.

But today standing in the car park opposite I think there is a simple elegance to the building.

Most people will remember it as the Gaumont, while there will be some who might still have memories of going there when it was the Savoy, but when it opened in 1920 it was the Picture House.

Location; Nicolas Road

Picture; the art of brick ..... sunshine and The Picture House cinema, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Picture House, 1920 from the Lloyd Collection

Another bit of the story of Chorlton's first cinema and a performance of Dorothy in the April of 1914

Now I would like to think that one day I could identify these members of the Chorlton Operatic Society.

In 1910 their secretary was  Herbert Bayfield of 61 Claude Road, and their conductor a T M Ferneley, but of course three years later when they gave this performance at the Pavilion Theatre in the April of 1914 these two may have passed on to greater things.

But the picture remains a wonderful find and has set me off again thinking about just how much there was to do in Chorlton back in the early decades of the last century.

According to Kemp’s Almanack and Handbook for 1910, there was everything from an amateur gardening society, a drama club and Literary Association along with our operatic society and an orchestral society.

So plenty to do, and if instead if you fancied sport there were cricket, football, tennis, golf and hockey clubs which vied with lacrosse, cycling and bowling to draw the more athletic resident out to play.

Which brings me back to the operatic society and the Pavilion Theatre.

The society was active by 1910 and still going strong fifteen years later when the Manchester Guardian reported that the "Chorlton Operatic and Dramatic Society has given three successful performances of ‘Peg o’ My Heart” this week at the Chorlton Public Hall, in aid of the Widows and Orphans Fund of the National Union of Journalists.  A fourth and final performance of the play will take place tonight.”*

Back in 1914 they had been performing in aid of the Chorlton and District Nursing Association which was also listed in the Alamanck and run by Mrs Worlidge of 12 Edge Lane who would soon be running the Red Cross Voluntary Hospital in the Sunday School of the Baptist Church.

And so the picture does begin to tie many little things together.  The influx of new people into the township was sufficiently large and diverse to support many cultural activities and the Operatic Society were performing in the relatively new Pavilion on the corner of Wilbraham and Buckingham Roads.

It had been opened around 1904, soon changed its name to the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens and from 1909 was our first cinema.

It remains a place that fascinates me and continues to offer up new stories ever since I came across a photograph of the place in the June of 1910.

And finally there was Mr Herbert Bayfield of 61 Claude Road whose address is listed in 1911 but is missing from the census record just a few month later, which is odd given that he had been living there by 1904.

But maybe he had moved on, which of course will perhaps mean he is not one of those on our picture.

Pictures; the Chorlton Operatic Society April 1914 from the Manchester Courier, courtesy of Sally Dervan, and the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens, June 1910 from the Lloyd Collection

*Chorlton Dramatic Society’s Effort for Charity, Manchester Guardian November 21 1915.

It’s the little bits of Chorlton’s history that prove fascinating ...... upstairs in the grandest of our old cinemas.

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.

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.

For in a conversation with them last night I learnt that for years the upstairs which once formed the circle of the picture house was where the coffins were made.

From that floor they were dispatched by shute to the ground floor.

In the great sweep of history I am the first to admit that this would not warrant even a footnote in most respectable history books but I like it especially as it points up to that simple observation that there is always something new to discover.

And that alone may qualify the Gaumont for an entry in the new book I am writing with Peter Topping which we have called the Quirks of Chorlton.

As the name implies it is a light hearted but a scholarly look at bits of Chorlton whose history may never get into the official accounts of the township.

So with that in mind there is a standing invitation to nominate a place or person to be considered for inclusion.

And if you have a picture all the better, although it does have to be your own and not lifted from elsewhere.
Leaving me just to confess that I am of that age to have referred to the cinema as the “flicks” but there are no prizes for knowing why.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Coop Funeral Care, 2014 from the collection of Andy Roberston, and the Picture House, circa 1920 from the Lloyd Collection

Chorlton land marks ….. catch 'em while you can

So, this is the story which is light on detail but does have the pictures.

The side of the cinema no one looked at, 2024

The cinema opened in 1920, had several names and was arguably the biggest and most impressive of the five Chorlton cinemas which have offered a heap of film experiences from Tom Mix to Towering Inferno.

All closed up and nothing left to sell, 2024

If you can remember saying you were going to the “flicks”, faced the dilemma of whether to go for a Kiora or a choc ice and on occasion opened the fire doors for your friends, then the golden age of the cinema was yours.

The Precinct came along fifty or so years later, and in its hey day provided a selection of retail possibilities from a coffee to a roll of wood chip, lots of frozen food, suntan lotion and a copy of the Stretford Journal.

Sadly some landmarks have gone, and those sipping their lattes outside the former Woolworths can only mourn its passing with its Ladybird clothes, Pick and Mix selections and from the 1950s those distinctive round vanilla ice cream in the their tub shaped wafer cones.

Location; Chorlton

At least the car park has survived .... for a while, 2024

Waiting for customers, 2024

Closure, 2024

Pictures; Chorlton landmarks, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

To ice skate or watch a movie? …….Chorlton in 1914

Now this is a picture of our own ice rink, here in Chorlton.

The Chorlton Ice Skating Rink, 1907

It was located on the corner of Longford Road and Oswald Road and is a place I have long been fascinated by and have written about. *

During the early decades of the last century ice skating was a popular past time and newspapers like the Manchester Guardian regularly reported on just when it would be possible to glide and slide on the ice and where across the city there were sites available.

In the December of 1908 the Manchester Guardian announced “There was skating in Manchester yesterday at Broughton Park” and went on to list alternatives at "Drinkwater Park, Bell Vue, Withington and Chorlton, along with Lindow Common near Wilmslow and Buxton where “there was good ice [as well as] several exposed waters on the Derbyshire side. **

Skating on the Meadows, 1914

Two years later the same newspaper reported that “The skaters were out betimes yesterday.  

The 14 degrees Fahrenheit of the night put the finishing touch on the Manchester waters and made the ice come almost up to the advertisement that recommended it ‘perfect ice’ and ‘safety guaranteed’…… with no sheet of water of any size missing from the list.  Chorlton Meadows, Sale, Belle Vue, Broughton and Drinkwater Water parks, all frozen.  

In prices one may choose between the humble ‘tuppence of Chorlton to exalted two shillings of Broughton Park, but it is only fair to Broughton to add that, in the event of the ice holding, the 2s ticket lasts the week out”.***

And the prices tell us all we need to know about skating on the Meadows, which was the preserve of the tenant farmers who rented land close to the Mersey.

But of course, outside skating is determined by the vagaries of the weather, and even in a time which was perhaps seasonally colder than today the window was short.

Manchester Ice Palace, 1986

Which led to the construction of indoor stadiums, of which the first in the City was the Manchester Ice Palace on Derby Street in Cheetham.  

It opened in the October of 1910 and was the largest indoor rink in Britain with a capacity of 2000, seated and standing.****

All of which is fine but runs into the buffers when matched against our own Chorlton Skating Rink which seems to have dated from sometime after 1905.  

The building does not appear on the OS map of 1907 which was a surveyed two years earlier but is referred to by a “H” who sent a picture postcard of the rink on January 17th 1907 to Albert, adding that  “This is a photo of Chorlton’s Skating Rink.  I had a dust on it on New Year’s Day and it is OK”.

The Chorlton Ice Skating Rink, 1907, painted in 1946

Which seems to be confirmed by a local artist who painted the building in 1946 from another picture postcard dated 1906.

That it was well established by 1909 is further confirmed  by listings in the newspapers advertising skating shows and hockey matches between Chorlton and rival teams.

So, on October 20th of that year, for the price of 6d you could have seen “Professor Hurst the Great Trick Skater” and the following night cheered on Chorlton as it played Ashton. 

At present the early business history of the place is fragmentary.

I know that in 1910 it is referred to as the Chorlton Rinkeries when it was the venue for the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Amateur Gardeners’ Society which held it annual show there on August 13th, but regularly was also described as the Chorlton Ice Rink.

On the Meadows, 1914

The Chorlton-cum-Hardy Ice-Skating Company only came into existence sometime between 1910 and 1911, but in 1912 A George Alfred Barker “applied for the transfer to himself of the music and dancing license of the Skating Rink, Oswald Road”.

All of which suggests that our building was branching out into new areas of entertainment, a journey which was to end in it showing films.  

In 1914 it was listed as the Longford Picturedrome in the Kinematograph Year Book Program Diary and Directory.  

It could seat 600 and its proprietor was a James Morland. Sadly that is all we have and the listing did manage to substitute Street for road in the address. 

And in the same way George Alfred Barker is little more than a name.  I know he was born in 1864, lived with his wife on Hampton Road from at least 1901 and described himself as a “Bank Clerk”.

I have yet to find out if he was a director of the company or if he was involved when the company was wound up in 1916.

What we do know is that the building went up for sale by auction in the February of the previous year.  It was described as “Timber built SKATING Rink.  The building is substantially built, lofty, and well lighted, stands on a sound brick foundation, and is built entirely of well-seasoned timber, the beams being the best Belfast trusses.  It is fitted throughout heating apparatus, electric light fittings, excellent maple floor, ante rooms, cloakrooms, lavatories, café, exit doors, and passages each side 10ft wide.  Frontage of 115 ft to Longford Road, and 320ft. to Hartley and Oswald Roads.  The site contains 5,951 square yards or thereabouts, and is held on a yearly tenancy expiring June 1915, at a rental of £130, which can either be terminated or renewed”.*****

The Ice Rink, 1907

There was an expectation that it might appeal to “Cinema and Circus Proprietors, Entertainers, and others”.

But it seems its days as a centre of entertainment were over, and by 1935  the site was filling up with houses, which are still there today.

Just why it failed is unclear.  Perhaps the Great War had a part to play or maybe its rival the Chorlton Pavilion on Wilbraham Road proved a popular venue.  

It had started as a Variety Hall and Gardens, but also became a cinema and in 1912 underwent alterations. 

Chorlton Pavilion and Winter Gardens, circa 1906

Or our cinema audiences might have preferred the purpose built Palais de Luxe Picture House which opened in 1914 and was conveniently sited close to the new Chorlton Tram Terminus.

And the years just before and after the Great War were a time of cinema mania.

The Manchester Guardian in 1919 wrote that "No form of indoor amusement or recreation can show such a phenomenal growth as the kinema, [adding] that some twenty million people in the United Kingdom visit the moving picture show once a month .... and in Manchester despite building difficulties cinemas new picture houses are being opened".*****

The jury is out, but I am sure I will return to our skating Rink and Picturedrome.

The Palais De Luxe cinema, circa 1928

Leaving me just to thank Richard Bond and Chris Griffith who provided some additional research.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; The Chorlton Ice Rink, 1907 from the collection of Chris Griffiths,  The Manchester Ice Palace, 1986, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Skating on Chorlton Meadows from the Manchester Courier, 1914, “Chorlton Skating Rink (later the Picturedrome” J Montgomery, 1946 m80132, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Chorlton Pavilion and Winter Gardens, circa 1906, from the Lloyd Collection, and the Palais De Luxe cinema, circa 1928, Charles Ireland, GD10-07-04-6-13-01 courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives 

*Chorlton and Ice Skating, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20and%20ice%20skating

** Skating in Manchester, Manchester Guardian December 29, 1908

***Manchester Waters Busy with Skaters, Manchester Guardian, January 28, 1910

****Ice Palace Derby Street Cheetham Manchester, Architects of Greater Manchester 1800-1940, https://manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/index.php/buildings/ice-palace-derby-street-cheetham-manchester

*****Sales by Auction, Manchester Guardian, February 6, 1915

******Local Amusements, Manchester Guardian, December 8th, 1919