On this day in 1936, the Jarrow Marchers arrived in Loughborough, apparently travelling 11.25 miles [1] from Nottingham, on their way to London via Leicester, to present their petition to parliament. Their arrival in Loughborough came during a year when:
“1936: Edward VIII becomes King but abdicates the same year.
George VI then becomes
King.
The Empire
Cinema closes. The New Empire Cinema opens on Cattle Market.
The Odeon cinema opens on Baxter Gate.”
- - PMP2000:
People Making Places. Charnwood Arts, 1999
In celebration of the start of the new millennium, the year 2000, Charnwood Arts, a local arts organisation, researched some of the history of Loughborough and presented a succinct timeline on the internet, although this is no longer available. The national context into which Loughborough is placed, is the scandal associated with the relationship between Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, which culminated in his abdication as King, and the rise of unemployment across the country, while the local context naturally centres around the cinemas in Loughborough.
The equally succinct timeline of events in 1936, which appears on the archived BBC History webpages, includes a note of the death of George V, in January 1936, and the subsequent abdication of Edward VIII in December of the same year. The site also notes the end of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in August 1936, and the presentation to parliament of a petition in person by 200 workers from Jarrow, an event which has some significance to the town of Loughborough, and to its cinemas.
1936 was the midst of the golden era of film and Loughborough, like many other towns, had, over the years, had several venues which adapted to the showing of films. These included, amongst others, the Picture House on Ashby Road, the Temperance Hall on the corner of Cattle Market and Granby Street, the Oddfellows Hall on Sparrow Hill, and the New Empire, of 1914. However, the early ownership and management of the local cinemas is a separate story in itself, involving the Universal Car Company, Percy Oswin and Charles Knight Deeming.
In addition to the various venues showing films, in 1936 the town also had a purpose-built cinema, which was opened on Monday 19 September 1921, by councillor Armstrong, the town’s deputy mayor. The Victory Cinema, whose first manager was Horace Higgins, was situated on Biggin Street, its tall tower, rising from the corner of a side street making a big impact at the time. The cinema was designed by A.E. Bullock of Messrs. A.E. Bullock and Jeeves, architects of London, and was built along Neo-Classical lines. The cost was over £3,000 and inside, the building was decorated in a variety of shades of green, a deep azure blue and gold, with 429 de lux inlaid chairs provided by Turner Cheshire Furnishings, and carpets by local company, Armstrong & Sons of Market Place.
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| Tip-up seating similar to that in the Victory cinema |
In 1933, The Victory became part of the circuit owned by local man Charles K. Deeming, when Griffin and Spalding of Nottingham provided new carpets, seating and curtains. A new balcony, designed by Archibald Hurley Robinson with seating for 500 people, was installed in 1937, increasing the capacity to 1,400. In 1953, the cinema then passed into the hands of the Essoldo chain. Many-a local has a tale to tell about the double seats which were a feature of the back row, and the low-cost tickets, although many also remember The Victory as ‘the flea pit’, a commonly used description across the country for a somewhat run-down cinema. The Victory eventually closed in January 1967, demolished by August of that same year.
Whilst the Victory had been a purpose-built cinema, the New Empire was built as a multi-purpose establishment, that developed into a dedicated cinema. Initially named the New Empire, presumably to distinguish it from the Empire Varieties venue on Swan Street, the New Empire was situated on what is now known as Cattle Market, and was opened on Monday 14 September 1914 by the mayor, Thomas Mayo. As well as a ground floor, the building had a balcony, and seating capacity for 1,000 people on tip-up chairs, provided by local company, Armstrong & Sons. The interior was decorated in white and gold, and the walls were adorned with gold-framed pictorial panels. The programmes presented comprised musical acts, drama performances and vaudeville, alongside films and a children’s matinee programme each Saturday afternoon. Originally owned by H.P. Higgins, in 1916 Higgins and H.N. Martin formed a limited company – the Loughborough Theatre Company – and by 1917, adverts for events taking place in the venue simply appeared as “The Empire”.
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| The New Empire when it was the Curzon, 2004 |
In 1929 there was some remodelling of the Empire, particularly of the café area, designed by the local architect Francis C. Haynes, which resulted in two gable ends fronting onto Cattle Market, the café being in the left-hand side, the cinema entrance to the right. A more major redevelopment, however, too place in 1936, which included a new auditorium by Archibald Hurley Robinson, who we already know was responsible for the design of the refurbished Victory Cinema in 1937. In addition to the new auditorium, the frontage that we would now call Art Deco was completely altered, faced with Hathernware (formerly Hathern Station Brick and Terra Cotta Company) cream faience tiles, the parapets dressed in glazed blue copings atop a decorative frieze. Rising from the centre of the building was a striking tower. The building was officially opened by the mayor, Frederick George Fleeman. The Hathernware company would go on to clad many more cinema buildings, and their work can be found across the globe.
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| Hathernware faience tiles on the Odeon cinema, 2021 |
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| The New Empire as the Odeon, 2021 |
Meanwhile, over the other side of town, another entertainment venue was being built. The Odeon, part of the new Oscar Deutsch chain of cinemas was officially opened on Saturday November 21, 1936, by Loughborough mayor Arthur Lacey. The cinema, designed by Arthur J. Price of the Harry Weedon Architecture practice, was prominently sited in an area near the Nottingham Road, its striking façade being constructed in cream faience tiles from Hathernware, in a basketweave pattern with bands of black and green tiles at the bottom. Its side facing onto Lemyngton Street had an advertising board of unusual design as it was secured in a brick frame, with horizontal bands of protruding brick. The corners of the building were gracefully curved in shape, while the entrance canopy and the steps into the building echoed this design.
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| The former Odeon cinema as Beacon Bingo, 2021 |
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| The advertising boards on the side of the former Odeon, 2021 |
This new Odeon cinema was managed by Clarence George Starkey, who had come directly from his position as manager of the Rialto Cinema in Leeds. Despite only being at Leeds for a year, Starkey had plenty of cinema managerial experience, having held a similar position at the Regal Cinema in Bradford for three years, and having spent 10 years prior to that in Chicago, where he owned a dance hall, conducted dance orchestras and arranged numerous shows and entertainments.
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| Detail of the basketweave Hathernware faience tiles on the former Odeon, 2021 |
As a result of Starkey’s experience, the people of Loughborough were treated to performances of Starkey’s accordion-playing, organised parades through the town’s streets, and to a host of amusing promotional displays, both within the cinema foyer, and across the town in shops with whom Starkey struck up a deal. One of the most exciting promotional events involved jumping beans in the local electricity showrooms, designed to promote the film “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, which jumped for joy at the information imparted on a card in the showroom window which read: “The charge of the Loughborough light brigade has been reduced, all electricity labour savers are now within range of your pocket!” Hopefully, this playful marketing brought in a bigger audience than might otherwise have been the case, and this was certainly so, when to promote “Marked Woman” Starkey placed photographs of female factory workers on boards in the cinema foyer, marked some faces with a cross and invited those who recognised themselves to collect a free pass to see the film.
The photographs of the factory workers had been taken by Starkey himself who actually visited all the factories in Loughborough in 1938. This would have been an enormous feat, Loughborough being at the height of its industrial strength at the time. Indeed, in 1938, at the ball staged to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the incorporation of the borough of Loughborough, the mayor, Arthur Lacey said: “... the inhabitants of the town were the citizens of no mean city and, after all was said and done, took a rightful second place in the county [after the county town of Leicester]. A London man had once told him that one could not go into any town or city in the country which did not contain a product of Loughborough." In January 1931, the Nottingham Journal carried the headline “Big contracts for buses, bells, bricks, generators, cranes.” and went on to also cover hosiery and perfume manufacture.
It was this variety of industry and products that contributed to Loughborough’s optimism during a time of general depression, however, other parts of the country, where industry was centred upon perhaps one product, like coal or shipbuilding, were not faring so well. What Starkey missed by only one month, because his new cinema in Loughborough was not quite ready for use, was the visit made to the town by the Jarrow Marchers on their way to London to present a petition to parliament to request that their local shipyard be replaced by a steelworks, to help alleviate the problems of unemployment that were being experienced in the north-east of England around 1936.
The Jarrow Marchers were led on their journey by the MP for Jarrow, Ellen Wilkinson. The group left Jarrow on Monday 5th October, 1936, and stopped at Chester-le-Street; Ferryhill; Darlington; Northallerton; Thirsk; Boroughbridge; Harrogate; Wakefield; Barnsley; Sheffield; Chesterfield; Mansfield; Nottingham, before arriving at Loughborough Town Hall just before 6pm on the evening of Wednesday 21st October 1936. They were met by councillor George Frederick Fleeman, and members of the town council, religious, political and social groups. The petition the marchers carried with them was handed to the mayor for safekeeping overnight, before the group of nearly 200 were each served with a meat pie, mashed potato, bread and butter, and cake, which was paid for by the subscriptions of local people.
The walkers had travelled 15 miles [2] from Nottingham to Loughborough, a route which would probably have taken them past the new Odeon building, which at the time was under construction, and was within only a month of its official opening. Thus it was that Mr Charles Knight Deeming gave the Jarrow marchers, 200 seats in his newly refurbished New Empire Super Cinema, in which to enjoy a film, before they ate supper and before spending the night in the nearby Drill Hall. Early the next morning they would set off on the next leg of their trip that would see them arrive in Leicester, and be provided with tea by the Leicester Co-operative Society, and their boots mended by that society’s boot-repairing staff.
The Loughborough Odeon, opened in November 1936, closed its doors as a cinema and became a bingo hall in 1974, while the Empire was sold to the Essoldo chain in 1953, becoming known as The Essoldo, and then went through quite a number of name changes – The Curzon, The Classic, back to The Curzon, and then The Reel – before finally coming into the ownership of the Odeon in 2011. Today, the Odeon cinema has been joined by a new cinema, Cineworld, in a development off Baxter Gate, very close to the former Odeon cinema.
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| Cineworld, 2021 |
Meanwhile, as 1936 turned into 1937, the abdicated King, Edward VIII, married his Wallis Simpson, George VI was crowned, Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister, there is an outbreak of typhoid fever in Croydon, and the social research organisation, Mass Observation, makes its first survey of social attitudes. In Loughborough:
“1937:
Genatosan is taken over by the Fisons Group
1938: Land is bought on Derby Road for the
building of an airport for Loughborough.
Closure of
the Loughborough racecourse.
Hazlerigg Hall, now part of the university, is
opened on June 15th.
1939: The second World War begins.
The
Charnwood Forest Railway closes to passenger traffic.
Alan Moss
buys Island House in Granby Street for £1,400.
Loughborough racecourse is converted into an airfield.”
- - PMP2000:
People Making Places. Charnwood Arts, 1999
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Notes
[1] This is the miles stated on a type-written itinerary held at the National Archives
[2] In my opinion, this is more likely to be the miles walked from Nottingham to Loughborough. when you consider that Mr Yates (story in two parts - 1 and 2) walked from Loughborough to Nottingham and back each day for 7 days, and covered 183 miles, that works out at about 15 miles each way.
This article was originally published in 'Destinations', Sept 2021, pp.15-21, under the title 'The Reel history of Loughborough's cinemas', and is reproduced here by kind permission of the Society for One-Place Studies, with slight amendments.
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posted by lynneaboutloughborough
With apologies for typos which are all mine!
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