If you’re one of the folk who make up the 881,221 views of my blog, then you’ll know by now that I’m often writing about our local cinemas! I’ve put a link to some of those other posts about them in the notes below.
So, there could only be one candidate for an entry in the A–Z Blogging Challenge, in which I’m focussing on Art Deco in Loughborough, for the Letter O – and that would be Odeon!! And, there can only be one Odeon in Loughborough, can’t there? Well, yes, technically only one at a time, but the Odeon has been in two different buildings in the town, and notably, each having an Art Deco connection.
So, let’s have a look at Loughborough’s first Odeon, despite the fact that it was not the first of the two buildings to be built.
What is now the Beacon Bingo building on Baxter Gate, a building which is now owned by the Junction Church who are renovating it, was opened as an Odeon cinema. This was back in November 1936, when cinemas were hugely popular, and more and more were being built. Of course, Loughborough already had two other cinemas at the time the Odeon came along, but that didn’t deter Oscar Deutsch, who had built his first cinema in Brierley Hill in 1928, his first of the Odeon brand in 1930 at Perry Barr, and who by 1941 had overseen the opening of 258 Odeons in the UK.
Being built at the height of the Art Deco period, Loughborough’s Odeon on Baxter Gate is of the streamline moderne style, with its beautiful curved corners, its brilliant basket-weave biscuit-coloured faience tiles complemented by the striking black and green bands of stripes at the top and bottom of the building, and the marble-effect steps leading up to the entrance doors. The cinema’s first manager Clarence George Starkey was an entertainer extraordinaire, and made the most of his creative skills to ensure the success of the Odeon cinema.
.JPG){kind=tracking}
Meanwhile,
over on the other side of town, the Empire Cinema had opened in 1914, and as
well as being a cinema, also had an entertainment space within. In 1929 the building
was modernised slightly, but it wasn’t until 1936 that it had its Art Deco frontage
that we know today, added. Although re-opened a month before the Odeon on Baxter
Gate, so in October 1936, the building style, with its fabulous geometric
tower, is quite a contrast to the original Odeon, isn’t it? if you pop along
Town Hall Passage you can catch a glimpse of the beautiful stained glass windows
from the outside, and the ghost sign of the building’s original name on the
outside wall. This cinema went through numerous name changes, but today is Loughborough’s
Odeon cinema, and now the only cinema in town.
.JPG)
____________________________________
Notes
So Who was Clarence George Starkey
Jarrow Marchers and Loughborough cinemas
H is for Hathern Station Brick and Terra Cotta Company, Hathernware, and the HodsonFamily
Empire Cinema, WW2, and Sir Malcolm Sargent
____________________________________
I'm taking part in the A-Z April
Blogging Challenge!!
____________________________________
Posted by
lynneaboutloughborough
With apologies for
typos which are all mine!
_______________________________________________
Thank you for reading this blog.
Copyright:
The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:
Dyer, Lynne (2025). O is for Odeon (again!) Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/04/o-is-for-odeon-again.html [Accessed 17 April 2025]
Take down
policy:
I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.
External Links:
By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.
Blog
archive and tags:
If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.
Searching
the blog:
You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:
site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”
NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space
Thank you for reading this blog.
Lynne
.JPG)
.JPG)
