Crown Hotel Cinema

In Bicester, Oxfordshire, the Corn Exchange, housed in the Crown Hotel, started showing films on an occasional basis from 1915. Films appear to have been presented rather more ‘formally’, as the Bicester Cinema, from April 1919, but this was also a part-time operation, and it appears to have closed after only a month or so.

This closure, however, did enable the Crown Hotel to pursue grander plans, cinema-wise, and the Crown Cinema opened on 2nd September 1919. Seating was for 320 in a hall in which the stage end had been draped in green and gold.

The ‘talkie’ era was ushered in with a British Thomson Houston(BTH) sound system. In the early-1930s the cinema was sometimes advertised as the Crown Hotel Cinema, and at this time the seating capacity reduced slightly, to 300.

The Kinematograph Year Book for 1938 provided a rather unusual entry for a cinema, specifying “BTH sound, 22ft proscenium, 300 seats, hotel (12 bedrooms), hot and cold, billiard table, RAC and AA appointed”.

By 1942 Mrs M. C. Tilt was the proprietor. She had redecorated and refurbished the cinema when, at 2am on Monday 5th July 1943, she was awakened by some unusual noises and found her cinema was on fire. Happily, she survived, but the hotel was reduced to just its four walls.

The final weekday film, on the Saturday, had been “Moontide”, starring Jean Gabin and Ida Lupino. There had been a one-day show on the Sunday, but that was missing from the usual advertisement in the newspaper.

This was the end of the Crown Hotel Cinema. When rebuilt, after the war, the new building was used as a function room and ballroom. It survived until demolition of the whole area in 1964/65 for a Tesco store. That, in turn, has since been replaced by a shopping centre, Crown Walk.

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