Loughborough and its cinemas

I recently had the good fortune to attend a lecture session and picture show in the Phoenix in Leicester. Lots of great stuff in the lectures, but I was particularly interested in Matt Jones's work to uncover the history of the many cinemas that have been in Leicester. There have been a number of books written on the history of Leicester cinemas, but Matt's own research discovered that many cinemas had been built along the routes of public transport, especially along the tram routes, so it was easy for people to get to the cinema. He also discovered that at first there were lots of small cinemas, in about the 1970s many were converted into two screens, and in the 1990s many introduced further screens. Some of the cinemas were known as flea pits, because people didn't have the opportunity to bathe so often in the earlier days of the cinema, so fleas were quite common in the buildings. Also, there seems to have been lots of name-changes going on!  

A friend, who has recently moved to Belper, told me all about the Ritz Cinema there, which was originally built as a municipal hall, and at various times has housed the library and a theatre, and has been a court and a meeting hall. Apparently there used to be two cinemas in Belper, and both The Ritz and The Palace were owned by the same family, the Morley family. 

Both these recent conversations reminded me of the cinemas in Loughborough, and that they have a very similar history to those in Leicester and in Belper. 

At one time there were 3 cinemas in the town: The Victory in Biggin Street (opened 1921, demolished 1967), The Odeon (built 1936, re-named as The Classic in 1974 and converted to a Beacon Bingo in 1977) on The Coneries, and The Empire (opened 1914, and still going strong as an Odeon) in Cattle Market. 

At one time both The Victory and The Empire were owned by Charles Deeming,  who also owned several other cinemas, for example The Olympia / The Regal in Coalville. 

A suitcase belonging to Charles Deeming

In its day, The Victory was known as the "flea pit", and like cinemas in Leicester had those famous "double-seats" in the back row!! I think The Victory has been immortalised in the 1957 film "The Last Show on Earth", a small "flea pit" situated in Sloughborough, and suffering a bit of a decline! Watch it, see what you think!

The Empire, which opened in 1914, was originally called The New Empire Palace of Varieties, although advertised as The Empire. In 1929 the façade was changed, and in 1936 extra space was added, the frontage again changed, to the Art Deco façade we see today, and the name changed to The New Empire. In 1954, when Deeming sold The Empire (as it had then become known) to the Essoldo chain, it became known as The Essoldo. 

As The Curzon

Then in 1972 the Essoldo chain sold The Essoldo to the Tigon Group who also owned the Classic (which is what the original Odeon became), but since there was already an Classic in town (the former Odeon), The Essoldo became known as The Curzon, before becoming The Classic when The Classic (i.e. the former Odeon) closed in 1973. Also in 1973 the cinema was spilt into three screens. The Classic name didn't last long though, and it reverted to being The Curzon in 1974, and a new screen was also opened. In about 2009 it was taken over by the Odeon chain.

The former Odeon, now Beacon Bingo

So, today we still have our Odeon cinema, with its Art Deco façade, but we are also about to have a Cineworld multiplex cinema, opening on the site of the former Baxter Gate general hospital. Not only is there going to be a cinema, but there will also be lots of restaurants and bars. The building work seems to be going well, and I believe things are scheduled to open in May. Here's a couple of pictures of how the site looked recently:

Taken from Jubilee Way

Building works on the former general hospital site Baxter Gate

The multiplex cinema will be set back from the former nurses' home on Baxter Gate

   

Needlemaking and other Loughborough connections

This week the Loughborough Archaeological and Historical Society held their members event which sees members of the society give presentations on things they've been researching that would be of interest to others. This year, I decided to give it a go, and presented a short talk on archaeology - my kind, not the trench-digging, field-walking kind - with examples of artefacts I've found on my travels that have informed my research.

If you would like to see the presentation, I've uploaded the slides , and I've included the transcript below.

Archaeology and the fundamental interconnectedness of all things (with thanks to DA)

In late 2012, when I responded to an advert for members of the public who were interested in the history of Loughborough to enrol on a 6-month course in Leicester on learning how to lead a guided walk, little did I know what was actually in store for me!

At the first session of the course I felt like a complete interloper! Almost everyone else there was attached to a museum  - The Old Rectory, The Abbey Pumping Station, The Space Centre, The GCR, Newarke Houses etc. – so I attached myself to the unattached chap next to me and we got on like a house on fire, which was great as he was a retired fire officer!

As a daughter of the grim industrial areas of South Wales, what exactly did I think I had to offer to people who might be interested in the history of our little market town – and probably knew more about it than I did anyway!

Well, to cut a very long story short, I may have known very little about Loughborough at the start of the course, but many years of researching significant (that’s significant to me) areas of Wales, and endless hours of pouring over census returns and bmd records in a quest to complete the family tree, all held me in good stead. And maybe, just maybe, being a librarian by day was also a bit of help!

So, I passed the tour guiding course, and have shared some of my knowledge on guided walks. But when I read on Twitter about 18 months ago that some people viewed Loughborough as a rubbish town, I decided to try and do something to raise the profile of the town. Thus, the blog, lynneaboutloughborough was born. Each Sunday evening I write a piece about, or related to, our wonderful town, and share this on the internet for anyone to read.

Articles are prompted by my own interests, by things people have said to me, by events happening in and around the town, and by chance finds.

I know the Loughborough Archaeological and Historical Society started life as the Loughborough and District Archaeological Society, and although I was daunted at the prospect of joining such a prestigious group, I paid my subs and showed up at meetings. Now, I know nothing about archaeology except what I’ve seen on television programmes like Time Team, and in truth, I have a bit of an aversion to getting dirty, but I bit the bullet and went on a fieldwalking event, and thoroughly enjoyed walking through a recently ploughed field looking for bits of debris that might be a flint arrowhead, or some kind of pottery. Problem was though, having been brought up in South Wales I could easily recognise slate, and had there been any granite I would have recognised that too, from regular holidays in Cornwall. But, I didn’t find anything significant, and was really rather more interested in the 19^th century horseshoe I spotted!

So, if digging trenches and walking ploughed fields isn’t quite my kind of archaeology then what is?

Well, antique and junk shops are! Charity shops are! 2^nd hand bookshops are! The internet is!

So, I dig around all of these, looking for clues, usually about something specific, but equally often just picking up things that might be of interest. Everything I see of buy helps me to build up a picture of what I’ve been researching into and helps me to understand more about social history.  

Take this postcard. A picture of Leicester, sent to someone in Loughborough and bought over 100 years later from Lichfield. To me, this is all hugely significant: My journey from home to town takes me along Albert Street, and I’ve always been fascinated by the engineering factory on the corner. Research revealed that it had once been a needlemaking factory, one of the ones run by the Grudgings family, at least one of whom died during WW1, and at least one other who survived (and whose WW1 diary is tweeted via the Carillon Museum). And here I am holding a postcard sent to Flo Grudgings, an elementary school teacher and a member of that needlemaking family. The card was posted in 1903.

And then, of course, there’s the Lichfield connection. Wasn’t Lichfield Cathedral once the cathedral associated with our town? And at least some of the current bells were cast by Taylor’s Bell Founders in 1947. It was Taylor’s, of course, who cast the bells for our beautiful war memorial, which can still be heard on Sundays when the carillon is played.

I did a spot of volunteering at the Carillon Museum this year, just before my grandmother died. How strange then to learn at her funeral that a long lost uncle who emigrated to the States in the ‘60s, regularly plays the carillon in his home town of Morristown, New Jersey.

But, back to archaeology! Earlier, I said I could recognise slate and granite, but perhaps I should also add alabaster to that list. I first met Ray State in the local studies library about a week after I’d written an article on spar ornament makers of Loughborough, so it was a real pleasure to come along and hear him talk, just before Christmas. Curiously, also a couple of weeks before Christmas, we had a sale of unwanted goods at work: We’re trying to raise money to train a guide dog, and for the huge sum of 50p I bought this alabaster egg. I got the feeling people thought I was a bit mad, but I’m now so glad I did buy it! Needless to say, I have been scouring the shops for other alabaster ornaments, but I don’t think I’ll ever find any! But, who knows, I might yet be surprised …

… as I was on another recent shopping trip looking for suitable Christmas presents!

Imagine my total astonishment and excitement when I stumbled across this trunk! Ok, so it’s a steamer trunk, but not just any old steamer trunk! Fortuitously, the last luggage label had been left on: This trunk belonged to Charles Knight Deeming, he, latterly of One Ash House, the former owner of the current Odeon (aka The Empire, The New Empire, The Curzon, The Reel), and the now demolished Victory Cinema, which stood in Biggin Street on the site now occupied by a card shop, Games Workshop and Bonkers.  

Ironically, I’m a little bit interested in cinema and theatre and had been researching the family tree of Charles Deeming. Unfortunately, at £165 the trunk was too expensive for me to buy – so no prop to show you!

Finally, it was a visit to a 2^nd hand bookshop in Warwickshire that led me to this publication,  Needlemaking, and the list of places to visit in the back. This included Forge Mill Needlemaking Museum in Redditch. This, of course, takes us back to the Grudgings family where we started, unless we want to explore these connections further, for Bordesley Abbey was on the same site as the needlemaking museum and there is a strong connection to Garendon Abbey and has been the subject of a community dig.

So, our archaeologies are fundamentally interconnected, but I must stop here, otherwise I could carry on connecting for a very long time!

Thanks for listening!