Granada Greenwich

234 Trafalgar Road,
London, SE10 9ER

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The Greenwich Granada was one of the plainest of the purpose built Granada chain, quite probably due to its awkward site size;long and narrow. It is situated on Trafalgar Road at the corner of Vanbrugh Hill.

It was opened by film star Gracie Fields on 30th September 1937 with Sabu in “Elephant Boy” and Brian Donlevy in “Midnight Taxi”. Designed by noted American theatre architect C. Howard Crane, with interior decoration by Theodore Komisarjevsky. It had 1,924 seats in stalls and balcony and a rather plain auditorium, quite unlike the style of the opulent Woolwich / Tooting / Clapham Junction Granada Theatre’s. It was equipped with a Wurlitzer 3Manual/8Ranks organ which was opened by organist Donald Thorne. The Granada Theatre also had a fully equipped stage.

Bingo was introduced part time from 1963 and the Granada closed as a cinema on 8th June 1968. Since then it was used as a full time Granada Bingo Club, and later a nightclub. In the early-2000’s, it was gutted to provide a large number of apartments requiring additional windows and balconies to be punched through the walls, a new raised glass roof to light a central atrium and the removal of a raised fin on the front façade.

The main foyer and circle foyer have been adapted to form a Chinese restaurant with large glass windows replacing what was the huge billboard for advertising the current films.

Contributed by Ian Grundy