H.D. Mooorhouse and a chain of cinemas

I don’t suppose many people in Chorlton today know of H.D. Moorhouse, and yet in the early decades of the 20th century he was responsible for setting up a chain of cinemas across the city and beyond.

And of course the point of the story is that his first cinema was here. It was the Pavilion opened in 1904 and acquired by Moorhouse in 1909.

Like many early cinemas it hedged its bets and continued to offer variety acts and in the June of 1910 it offered a bill of variety including the Whips. By then it had become the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens and stayed open through the inter war years.

By then Moorhouse had established a cinema circuit and had acquired the Palais de Luxe on Barlow Moor Road. It had opened in 1915 and was part of the circuit from 1939 until 1956, although it may have struggled on for another two years before closing and becoming a supermarket.*

Hubert Douglas Moorhouse was born in Kendal in 1879 but grew up along the Ashton Road in Openshaw. By 1911 he was living with his parents at 61 Wilbraham Road which was an eight bed roomed house along the stretch from York Road towards Brundretts Road.


Picture; the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens, from the Lloyd collection

*Hornsey, Brian, The Cinemas of H.D. Moorhouse and the H.D.M. circuit, Fuchsprint, 2001,

The Grosvenor Picture Palace on Oxford Road

I like Peter’s painting of the Grosvenor Picture Palace on Oxford Road which captures the elegance of the place.

It was opened in 1915 to a design by Percy Hothersall and with almost a thousand seats was I think the biggest cinema outside the city centre at the time.

Even now long after its days as a place to see films have ceased it is still a pretty impressive building.

Its green and cream terracotta tiles marked it out on that stretch of Oxford Road which apart from the Town Hall opposite and the old offices of the Poor Law Union on the corner of Cavendish Street was a drab spot.

And I just missed going there.

It closed as a cinema in 1968 and I had to be content with using it as a pub which it had become after unsuccessful stints as a bingo hall and snooker venue.

Still some of the original features still exist including the balcony, vaulted ceiling and much plasterwork.
I guess the cinema entrepreneur, H.D. Moorhouse would be pleased.*

The Grosvenor was part of his picture house chain which included two in Chorlton and given that for a while he lived on Wilbraham Road just down from the Lloyd’s Hotel I guess he must have visited the Grosvenor.

*H.D. Moorhouse, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/H.D.%20Moorhouse

Painting; the Grosvenor Picture Palace  © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

Grosvenor Picture Palace

It is an impressive building and one I have passed countless times over the years. It is on the corner of Oxford Road and I only knew it as a pub, but I would rather have fancied visiting when it was a cinema.

 It is the old Grosvenor Picture Palace which was designed by Percy Hothersall in 1913 and it opened in 1915. So it dates from same time as our own Palais de Luxe on Barlow Moor Road. It was in its time the biggest cinema in Manchester seating a 1,000 people.

What draws me to the building is that although much bigger than our own Palais de Luxe there is much here that we would recognise from the smaller cinema on Barlow Moor Road. 

Both had green and terracotta tiles and something of the same embellishments around the circular windows and blanks.

And there is one last connection. The Palais was part of the Moorhouse chain from 1939 while H.D. Moorhouse was a director of the Grosvenor.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Stories of old cinemas, ........Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens

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