Grand Cinema

Arley is a civil parish in the North Warwickshire district. It comprises two villages, New Arley and Old Arley, situated, respectively, to the west and east of the Bourne Brook and the Birmingham to Peterborough railway line.

The Grand Cinema, situated in New Arley, has been brought to my attention by fellow Cinema Theatre Association member Mary Williams, who lived in the village from 1945 to 1951, when she was 12 to 17 years old.

Inevitably, her memories of the Grand Cinema are as a teenager, so she has more recollections of, for example, the loudspeaker system that the manager used to tell the children to be quiet (and to admonish individual miscreants!) than she does of the building itself, save to say that it was stalls seating only.

Regrettably, I have been unable to find any references to this cinema on-line, so the following history is based solely on entries in the Kinematograph Year Books.

The Grand Cinema, Arley, is first listed in the 1945 edition, indicating either that it opened in 1944, or was only ‘discovered’ at that time. The proprietor was Mrs F. R. Hunt, of Anstey. There were 390 seats, an AWH sound system and three changes of programme weekly, with a separate Sunday show.

By the 1947 edition the seating capacity had reduced to 332 and there was one show nightly, with matinees on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

By the following edition Mrs Hunt had moved to Kirby Muxloe, and the seating capacity is given as 340.

The Grand Cinema is still listed in 1959, but not in the 1961 edition. (Rather frustratingly, I do not have access to the 1960 edition.)

So presumably it closed around 1959 and 1960.

Mary remembers the cinema being a very short way up Fir Tree Lane, on the right, from the roundabout where the Fir Tree Inn is still standing. Housing now occupies the site.

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