Remembering the Well Hall Odeon with a painting

Now, there has been a lot of talk recently about the cinemas of Eltham.

And like pubs on the High Street people have started championing their favourite, whether it be the ABC by Passey Place or the Gaumont on the hill.

Of course you would have to be pretty old  to remember that there was another cinema in Eltham on the corner of Westmount Road.

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

Like so many of the early cinemas it proved “not fit for purpose” when the newer, plusher and more modern looking picture houses came along later in the century.

For me the best, and the most modern looking of all our cinemas was the Well Hall Odeon.

It was just minutes away from where I lived and was somewhere I visited a lot and some where all my sisters went on a Saturday morning.

So I was pleased when Peter offered to paint the place and here is his painting.

We have been working together for a number of years now on joint ventures which have included the 80 meter History Wall installation, as well as  exhibitions and books.

Now Peter is a Preston lad always keen to tell me “that you can take the boy out of Preston, but never Preston out of the boy” which I guess is how many of us also feel about Eltham.

Work, marriage and just life may have scattered many of us across the country and beyond but this corner of south east London bounded by the river and Woolwich to the north and Kent over the county line will remain home.

So now that Peter has got a taste for Eltham we may have more of his paintings.

In the meantime just talking about Saturday morning pictures reminded him of the song he sang all those years ago.

It began with the refrain

We come along on Saturday morning
greeting everybody with a smile

We come along on Saturday morning
knowing it’s well worth while

And for those that want to return to those Saturdays mixing the noise, the talent contests and the old films here is a link to that lost world.  Saturday Morning Song *

Painting; The Well Hall Odeon © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

*We come along on Saturday morning
greeting everybody with a smile

We come along on Saturday morning
knowing it’s well worth while

Members of The Odeon Club we all intend to be
good citizens when we grow up and carriers of the free

We come along on Saturday morning
greeting everybody with a smile, smile, smile,
greeting everybody with a smile.

And as Peter points out even the screen can get it wrong.

NB the words sung by WHO? say
Members of The GB Club we all intend to be
but the words on screen where
Members of The Odeon Club we all intend to be
Found this explanation on Tinterweb as explanation for GB instead of Odeon

This one has the audio for Rank's other cinema chain (Gaumont British) hence the singer singing "GB Club" instead of "OD-EON Club". But it was the same song otherwise.

That first cinema at the top of Eltham High Street

This is the Eltham Cinema and was on the corner of the High Street and Westmount Road.

Eltham Cinema, circa 1913

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.

I can’t be sure but I am guessing it survived as a Picture House until the big plush cinemas further down the High Street, and in Well Hall offered a bigger and comfortable experience.

And until now that was about all I knew, but yesterday I came across The Kinematograph Year Book, Program, Diary and Directory 1914, which is packed with everything from a list of all the cinemas in 1914 with information about this new and exciting form of entertainment along with lots of adverts.

Advert

And from the book I now know that 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.

In time we will learn more and perhaps also a bit more about the cinema which sadly had no listing for the number of people it could seat.

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

Pictures; Eltham Cinema, courtesy of Thisiseltham, and advert from The Kinematograph Year Book, 1914, page 43

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

On the High Street back watching the film of your choice

So Eltham has its own cinema again.

For any one who can remember the Well Hall Odeon, the ABC on the high Street and the Gaumont this will be good news.

There may even be those who remember the old Eltham Cinema Theatre which opened in 1913 and was demolished in 1968.

I say remember it but long before it was knocked down it had ceased showing films which just leaves us with the three of which the Odeon renamed the Coronet struggled on the longest, finally become empty in 2000.

Although I do think it provides the image of a closed cinema in that warning about the dangers of film piracy shown at the pictures.

Any way I look forward to how the consultation goes and the prospect that once again on the High Street you will be able to “sit back and enjoy a film.”

In the meantime here is a reminder of how things went during the back end of the 20th century.

This is the ABC which closed its doors in 1972 and was demolished soon after

It had stood on the corner of the High Street and Passey Place for half a century.

It was opened as the Palace Cinema in 1922, showed its first talkie in 1930* and for a few brief years from 1966 to 69 was where I went with first Pamela, then Jenny and finally Ann, but that is a story for another time.

Picture; the demolition of the ABC in the High Street courtesy of Chrissie Rose.


* ELTHAM IN OLD PHOTOGRAPHS, John Kennet, 1991

Goodbye to the ABC in the High Street .................. 1972

Now this picture postcard of the old ABC cinema in the High Street has a lot going for it.

For a start there is that simple observation that few of us send picture postcards today.

Mobile phones with cameras which can snap and send an image around the world in seconds have pretty much done for the old picture postcard.

Of course long before this technological whizz the postcard had its day.  The cost of postage and the demise of the frequent postal collection and delivery meant that bit by bit they were used less and less.

Unlike the start of the last century when if you wanted to arrange to meet in the afternoon or tell family you’d be home later that day the postcard was the thing.

And the early 70s I guess was the cross over point when the sale and use of the picture card was in decline.

Not that the Eltham Society thought so when they produced this one which was number 4 in a series on Eltham and may well have been chosen to mark the passing of this picture house which had opened its doors in the August of 1922 and closed half a century later.

I have fond memories of the place, it was after all a safer choice than the Odeon to take a girlfriend given that we lived just a few minute’s walk from the roundabout and you never wanted to encounter family on your first date.

Its passing caught me unawares.  At the beginning of 1972 I went back to College in Manchester and when I returned at Easter it had shown its last film and gone dark.

I can’t now remember if I took in a film at the cinema before I left home but given that the ABC was showing the newly released Steptoe and Son I don’t think I did.

And that may gives us a day in January for when the photograph was taken.

Of course given the large number of young people waiting outside it could be a Saturday but as the film was classified an A and there are plenty of adults accompanying the children it is equally likely that it will be a matinee in what was left of the holidays.

So I guess I shall have to go looking in the local press for January 1972 and in the meantime reflect on the wonderful collection of images held by the Greenwich Heritage Centre, from where I found this one.

Pictures, Eltham ABC, 1972, GRW 1647, http://boroughphotos.org/greenwich/ courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, http://www.greenwichheritage.org/site/index.php

Saturday Morning Pictures at Well Hall Odeon in 1965

You never quite forget that mix of noise and anticipation which was Saturday Morning Pictures.

It started when the manager asked if everyone was happy, continued into the competitions and lasted through most of the morning.

It is easy to over romanticise what was just another way the cinema chain could create more revenue while introducing a young audience to the magic of the big screen.

And once you were hooked you were hooked for life.  The cycle might begin with Saturday Morning Pictures but quickly moved on to the “date” on the back row and in the fullness of time to visits with your children to Disney and of course to Saturday mornings all over again this time dropping off and collectiing a new generation of Saturday children.

But you can also be over cynical even given that what you saw was pretty dire.

I can’t say I ever enjoyed those stories of daring do by young children or the equally improbable tales of faithful dogs and intelligent dolphins saving the day.

I do remember a series which mixed the theme of Ancient Rome, alien invaders and a particularly nasty dictator.

On reflection it was probably shot on a back lot using B actors and involved lots of oddly dressed men riding on horseback across dusty plains.

You knew it was cheap because the plot didn’t follow a logical path and events often passed from bright daylight to late afternoon and back again in the course of one horse race.

All that said they were fun.  There were the cartoons and films, along with live events ranging from talent competitions and fancy dress to the appearance of a well known celebrity and it was always someone’s birthday which was met with a loud shout.

I am not sure whether it would still work today but from the 1940s into the 60s they were a way of life for many children with that added advantage that it freed up time for the adults. In the 1950’s the average weekly attendance at  children’s cinema matinees was over 1,016,000 with 1735 cinemas holding cinema matinees for children.*

The ABC chain began a special club in the 1940s for their ABC Minors complete with badge and song and birthday cards.  It cost just 6d.

I can’t now remember which cinema I went to, but I still have vivid memories of collecting my sisters from the Well Hall Odeon and getting there a little early just to catch the last ten minutes of whatever was going off.

They were never ABC Minors, after all when you lived just minutes away from the Odeon there was no point tramping all the way up to the High Street to the ABC on the corner of Plassey Place.

So that was my Saturday mornings in Eltham till mum judged that Stella and Elizabeth were old enough to take my two younger sisters without me.

I don’t suppose my mornings at the flicks had lasted that long and nor did theirs. They were probably one of the last generations to enjoy that mix of noise and anticipation in the dark accompanied by that warm smell of cinema disinfectant, and popcorn.

There may still be Saturday Morning Pictures but it costs a lot more than 6d and I can't think they will be the same, but then perhaps I am just old and biased.

* Wheare Committee http://terramedia.co.uk

Pictures, Well Hall Odeon, courtesy of Eltham, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eltham/210661675617589?fref=ts and  ABC Minors Badge, ABC Minors children’s cinema postcard Happy Birthday, 1948, BD084660
University of Essex, http://collections.ex.ac.uk/repository/handle/10472/3222?show=full
http://cinematreasures.org/video/abc-minors-matinee

At the opening of the Well Hall Odeon, May 20th 1936

Now it would be a full 28 years after the Well Odeon was open that I first saw a film there.

And of course I have no idea what the film was or for that matter almost any of the pictures I went on to see at the place.

But it was a regular haunt made more so because I had the job of taking my sisters there on a Saturday morning.

Of all the picture houses I have been in there, was something special about the Odeon.

It started with that unique box office in the centre of the foyer, that thick carpet, the decor and of course the smell.

Put them all together and you felt that this was somewhere special, a place not only to be entertained but a place where for a few hours the daily routines along with the niggles of the day could be forgotten.

And these picture houses were designed for just that purpose.  Plenty of homes back in 1936 were still austere places little in the way of luxury and by comparison drab and dim and cold.

But the Well Hall Odeon radiated style from that tall glass and tiled tower to the sweep of the entrance roof.

And it was big. It dwarfed the houses that surrounded it stretched back and was only really challenged by the church opposite.

So I am really pleased that Chrissie shared the souvenir programme with me.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Picture; souvenir booklet of the opening of the Well Hall Odeon, 1936 courtesy of Chrissie Rose

Chubby Checker, cowboys and Pathe News ........... Saturday morning at Well Odeon with a thank you to Sandra

Now  I am revisiting Saturday morning pictures and in particular the Odeon at Well Hall.

And as ever the memories came flooding back with a fair number of people sharing their stories which got me thinking that so much of our recent history gets lost because we just take it for granted.

But these bits of our collective story are as important as any of the great events and are often just lost.
So here is Sandra Axford Wilcox’s own vivid recollections of the magic that was Saturday morning pictures.

"I remember Saturday morning pictures at We'll Hall Odeon. 

Everyone stamping their feet when the cowboys were chasing the Indians. 

The unmistakable voice of Pathe News. 

And the competitions, my big sister made me go up on the stage for a dance off - doing The Twist to Chubby Checker. 

The manager would walk along the stage holding a much coveted biro over each dancers head and whoever got the most cheers would win the pen.... and no, I didn't win."

All of which just leaves me to hope that a shed full of more memories will tumble out.

Painting; The Well Hall Odeon © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

Who remembers the ABC in Eltham?

Who remembers the ABC in Eltham?

I thought I did, and was more or less certain it was where Pamela and I went for our first and only date in 1966.

It was on the corner of Passey Place and the High Street or I thought it was.
Not that I have given it much thought over the years until recently when I began searching the High Street for it.

And as I drew a blank I slowly concluded that I had imagined the whole thing which is one of the down sides of having been born in the first half of the last century.

You just assume that as the evidence is not there it never happened.  Now that I know is silly because all too often in the course of tracking a story or crawling over my family history I have come across events and places which prove I was right.

And so it is with the ABC, for despite my sisters being unable to remember the cinema, there are a few pictures of the place.

It opened as the Palace Cinema on August 22nd 1922 and closed just fifty years later.  Looking at a photograph of the place from the 1950s it seems much larger than I remember it.

I would like to have more images but so far only a few have come to light and all are copyright.

And that rather highlights one of those real concerns about our more recent past that it is vanishing without trace.

In the later 19th and early 20th century the picture postcard made certain that there was a visual record of almost everywhere.

But as the postcard went into decline so did the visual record of places leaving only the images captured by the amateur photographer whose pictures are all too often confined to private collections and rarely see the light of day.

The result I fear will be that many buildings and events like the old Whit Walks will be lost to future historians.

Now that matters and I rather think we should all do our bit for posterity and snap away, passing on the results to local history libraries and history groups, which is pretty much how Manchester has come to have 80,000 digital images of the city going back two centuries which are freely available for anyone to consult.*

And so I shall now go off and email the Greenwich Heritage Centre to see what they have on the ABC. So far I know that just twelve years after it opened the interior was remodelled and that in 1936 it was taken over by the Union Cinema chain who in turn were absorbed by Associated British Cinemas the following year.

It would be another twenty-seven years before it was renamed the ABC Cinema which was about the time I started going there.

I don’t remember how frequently I walked through its doors, but the Gaumont on Eltham Hill was a bit out of the way and given that I lived just up from the roundabout the Well Hall Odeon was a tad too close.

After all if you are out to impress a new girlfriend you can hardly do it on your own door step.

So I rather think that my date with Pamela and the big screen at Passey Place would have been followed by others with Jennie and Ann all of whom I remember with fond memories if alas the ABC has faded.

Pictures of an older Eltham in the absence of the ABC courtesy of Jean Gammons

*Manchester Local Image Collection, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Eltham Cinema and a word to the wise

Now here is a building that just passed me by.

Eltham Cinema, 1913-1968

It is the Eltham Cinema and 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.”

Like so many of the early cinemas it proved “not fit for purpose” when the newer plusher and more modern looking picture houses came along later in the century.

Holmfirth Picturedrome, 1912

A few of these old palaces of dreams do survive like the Picturedrome at Holmfirth.

It is was opened in 1912 and is a big enough to seat a couple of hundred people, has a double set of doors, with a veranda above it and must have made you feel special each time you went to watch that magic of light and moving pictures played out in the dark.

It was so at our cinema and the memories of some of those who attended the Eltham Cinema have been recorded but it is a pity that the building was lost.

There will be somewhere more pictures of the place, and perhaps even images of the inside along with the odd bit of furniture.

Palais de Luxe, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 2013

And these can turn up in the most surprising of places.

I was reminded of this when I persuaded the staff of the local Co-op to allow me upstairs into the warehouse floor.  The building had been opened as the Palais de Luxe in 1915 and converted into a supermarket in the late 1950s.

But upstairs high in the roof space at one end of the building was all that remained of the plaster mouldings which stood above the cinema screen.*

Palais de Luxe, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1924

Of course such finds are increasingly rare and most of us are now forced back on those old photographs and picture postcards.

These are themselves not always readily available.  Some are stored in local history collections and others appear picture books.

There is a fine collection in the book Eltham In Old Photographs.**

And one in particular caught my eye of that part of Court Yard now dominated Grove Market Place.

I say dominated but that is not completely accurate because the small shopping area is undergoing redevelopment and it was while reading about the controversy surrounding the plans that I realized I had no idea when it was built.

There on page 78 as the answer.  It was opened in 1967 and once again I realized that another bit of Eltham’s history had passed me by.

I have either forgotten or was totally oblivious to the demolition of the old properties and building of the Market Place.

This is all the more appalling when within two years I was using the bank on the corner and for years after Dad went to the shop opposite for his paint.

All of which reinforces that simple rule, never take anything for granted, watch for the news of a new planning application and always have a camera with you.

Pictures; Eltham Cinema, courtesy of Thisiseltham, Holmfirth Picturedrome and interior of the old Palase de Luxe Chorlton from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/forgotten-photograph-palais-de-luxe-in.html

** Eltham In Old Photographs, John Kennet, 1991, Alan Sutton Publishing

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

What should we do with the old buildings of Eltham?

The Well Hall Odeon in 1936

It is 80 years since the Well Hall Odeon opened and maybe 48 years since I last saw a film there.

And for a long time the place has sat empty and forlorn with an uncertain future.

It was the boldest of our cinemas, grander than the ABC in the High Street and more fun to be in than that other one on the hill.

Now I know some people are less than pleased with its current use and this does raise that interesting debate about what should happen to an old and much loved building.

Ideally of course it should continue doing what it did but that isn’t always an option.

Our own old school house on the village green languished empty for years before a property developer transformed into four homes, and across the city textile mills with a history dating back to the early 19th century have been saved by being given a new use.

Sometimes it works well, while in a few cases you do have to reserve judgement.

The 1830 warehouse and replica of the Planet, 2004

Such was the fate of the 1830 warehouse which was part of the Liverpool Road Railway Station complex.

Back in 1830 this was the eastern end of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway which was the first passenger railway in the world.

When the site became the Manchester Museum of Science and Technology part of the inside of the warehouse was dramatically altered to allow exhibits from an old power station to be displayed there.

But as if to make up for what was a pretty ruthless act of vandalism the remainder of this unique early railway building has been preserved.

So could anything else have been done with my old cinema?

I shall sit back and await the debate, which is more than just an argument about one building in Well Hall but begs the question of what should happen to any of those iconic and respected buildings in Eltham.

I am up for accepting almost any changes although I do feel uneasy at how certain fast food outlets and supermarkets have settled down in some of the places I knew as a child.

And the old cinema today in 2014

But then the alternative may be demolition which was the fate of the Welcome Inn, a place where I first saw a colour TV transmission.

Not that either me being in there or that it was one of the first places in Eltham to show a BBC 2 colour programme warranted it’s preservation.

But it was a little bit of our history, one I remember fondly.

That said there will be those who mutter “sentimental tosh.”

The Victorians and even the planners of the mid 20th century along with private developers had no such quibbles about tearing down and building a fresh.

Still, glad that the Odeon is not a car park or worse

Location; Well Hall, Eltham .

Pictures; of the Well Hall Odeon in 1936 and today courtesy of Chrissie Rose, picture of the 1830 warehouse from the collection of Andrew Simpson