Cinema

In Bakewell, Derbyshire, the precise location of the town’s first picture house is not known. The only known clue is from a former patron’s reminiscences many years later, when it was described as being “near the [railway] station”. The patron went on to describe the building as a “tin-roofed shed”. It was gas lit, and the manager, who was said to run the cinema on a shoestring, apparently ran a length of rubber to the lamp standard near the station yard to get a free supply, “until he got caught”!

It is also not known precisely when the cinema opened. A report in trade newspaper Kine Weekly, dated 2nd June 1921, said that the proprietor, Mr Helliwell, had been showing films in a general purpose room, but had now found a site on which to build a new cinema. Building work was to be starting shortly, and it was hoped the [unnamed] kinema would be open by that November.

The 1923 Kinematograph Year Book duly listed the Electric Cinema, operated by J. A. Helliwell & Company, with Mr Helliwell as the resident manager. There were two shows nightly, and two changes of programme each week.

By 1931, the Electric Cinema was being listed simply as the Cinema. By the following year, a Western Electric (WE) sound system had been installed, and the proprietor was Mrs M. Thompson.

The Cinema was also listed in 1934, but not in 1935. It was surely not coincidental that the Picture House (see separate Cinema Treasures entry) had opened in 1931, and the assumption is that the Cinema just could not survive this competition.

It is also a fair assumption that, at some time, the Cinema building has been demolished.

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