Lyric Picture House
96 Main Road,
Sheffield,
S9 5HL
96 Main Road,
Sheffield,
S9 5HL
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The Lyric Picture House was built in Darnall, an east-end suburb of Sheffield and opened on 22nd November 1920. A brick built building with a steel frame and a facade with terracotta relief. The site sloped upwards towards Fisher Lane at the rear, so the cinema was built ‘back to front’ with the screen at the front end of the building and the balcony to the rear. The projection room was at the rear of the stalls. A central entrance led into the stalls foyer where the paybox was situated. Two staircases led up to a small balcony foyer from where open passageways along each side of the auditorium led to the balcony seating. The cinema seated 1,020 - 800 in the stalls and 220 in the balcony.
A BTH sound system with Kalee projectors was installed in 1930 and the first talkie screened at the Lyric was “Sunny Side Up”. At the end of 1943, the Lyric Picture House came under the control of the the Leeds based Star Cinema Group, the first Sheffield cinema they acquired. They introduced Sunday opening in 1944 along with children’s Saturday matinees.
In March 1954 a new panoramic screen was installed, claiming to be the largest in Sheffield’s East End, in readiness for the first Cinemascope film to be screened in May 1955. From Sunday 27th May 1962, Sunday film performances were replaced by bingo sessions with Wednesday nights added a few weeks later. The Lyric Picture House closed as a cinema on 29th August 1962 with Ronald Fraser in “The Pot Carriers” & Ray Danton in “Spin Of A Coin” (The George Raft Story). It then became a full time Star Bingo Club, known as the Lyric Casino. After the casino closed, the building remained derelict for several years until it was demolished to make way for a housing development.
Contributed by
Richard Roper (abcman)
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Hi, new to this blog. Richard I have a relative Percy Hayward who was managing a Sheffield cinema in 1939. He was living in Darnell with his wife May was the cinema’s cashier. I am wondering if you know of him and which cinema he might have been managing. He lived on Elmham Rd in the 1930’s through until his death in the 1970’s.