Grange Picture House

HJHill on January 17, 2021 at 4:40 am

The auditorium rake followed the steep natural slope of the site; and one had the feeling of sliding forwards out of the seat.

The entrance shown in the photo was for the dearest and the mid-priced seats. The foyer had glazed, tiled walls (green and white, I recall) with doors either side of a central (dark wood and glass) pay box. The doors were at the heads of the two longitudinal aisles. One walked through the doors into a dark curtained triangle with the apex a few feet down the aisle.

Entrance to the cheap seats was via the right hand side of the building (shown in the photo), under a metal canopy to an entrance at the far end of the side wall. One entered a small lobby where there was a ticket counter in a wall opening; then walked into a dimly-lit a wooden box in the corner of the auditorium, turned right through double doors, and emerged at one end of the cross aisle below the screen (looming up on the right).

The only other cross aisle ran between exits located half-way down the side walls. It separated the cheap and mid-price seats. A heavy ornamental rope was hung between the rearmost cheap seats at either side of the aisle.

There was always an aroma of old-fashioned air freshener about the place.

There were three or four central large house lights hanging on chains from the high point of the barrel roof. They were hexagonal in shape, made of sheets of frosted/coloured glass, and very dated. They were supplemented with hexagonal-pillbox shaped glass lights fitted to the ceiling. The total effect was illumination with no atmosphere.

Above the screen (second half of the 1950s) was a pelmet from which the screen tabs hung in the air. There was no stage surface nor any sides into which the curtains were drawn. The screen was large and rather square, with Cinemascope shown as a rectangle across the middle. The masking did not move (if I recall correctly).

HJHill on February 22, 2013 at 3:11 pm

The Kinematograph Year Book for 1954 gives the screen as 30ft6 by 18ft3; there were 1088 seats. The late Colin Sutton’s web site reports that cinemascope was installed “circa 1954”, which would account for a screen 2ft6 wider than the original proscenium. Interestingly, the 1947 and 1954 capacities are the same; so no seats were removed due to the larger screen.

1954 prices were 1/– to 2/–. (10d to 1/6 in 1947)