Regal Cinema

In February 1914, in the Gateshead suburb of Whickham, G. Highton proposed a concert and picture hall for a site at the top of Swalwell Bank. This was to be a single-storey hall with an auditorium 64ft by 24ft, a platform with dressing rooms to its right and a projection box in an exterior lean-to. However, possibly due to the onset of the war, this project did not proceed.

After the war, in May 1921, Joseph Potts designed a new parish hall for St. Mary’s Church, converted from a coach house, stables, carriage washery and stable yard. The main hall was 57ft by 32ft, with a stage and dressing rooms; seating was for 400.

However, when the hall opened, in April 1922, the trustees were heavily in debt and their chairman, Frank Priestman, said that they “hoped, shortly, to run a cinema show and to show good pictures of an elevating character”. The hall was leased as a picture hall to John W. Tate by January 1923.

Interestingly, it is said to have been briefly used as a roller skating rink around 1930. Perhaps Mr Tate could not afford to equip the cinema for sound.

However, Margaret Curry acquired the hall, added a raked floor, and sound equipment, and ran the cinema from 1931 to 1947 as the Regal Cinema.

In 1947, it was taken over by George Stoddart Cinemas. By then, it seated 240. Judging by surviving posters, there was a policy of showing good quality ‘A’ class films about a year after their release, rather than the second features that many local cinemas survived on.

The Regal Cinema closed on 7th January 1965. The building became a bingo club, until conversion into a gymnasium in August 1993.

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