Alexandra Cinema

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The Lancashire Evening Telegraph website claims that construction of the cinema in Dock Street, Blackburn commenced in 1906, adding “But because it did not open until three years later, other purpose-built cinemas had also sprung up”. The L.E.T. site also mentions that the hall was initially called Pendleton’s Picture Palace after the brothers who built it: a title which, allegedly, locals contracted to ‘Penks’. It is not listed in the 1914 Kinematograph Year Book.

Around March 1917 James Ainsworth and his son-in-law John Hudson became the hall’s new proprietors. Presumably they renamed it the Alexandra Picture Hall, as that name was used on 25 May 1917 when the Lancashire Evening Post reported a coroner’s inquest into the suicide of the 57 year-old Ainsworth. Using a ladder and rope, he had hanged himself from the hall’s balcony supports early one morning when there to do his daily cleaning stint. He was said to have been “worried . . about the picture business”, having been in it for only “eight weeks”. Tragically, business was described as “good”. Prior to that, since the age of eight he had worked in cotton mills.

By KYB 1927 the hall is named Alexandra Picture Theatre. ‘Ainsworth and Hudson’ (a B Ainsworth with the same John Hudson) are listed as the proprietors until KYB 1954 when ownership passed to ‘Alexandra (Blackburn) Ltd’; a change that connected with the 1954 closure for renovation and installing Western Electric equipment to replace the original Gramo-Radio sound system. Gramo-Radio were based in Church near Accrington.