Did you know that Wivenhoe had a cinema in the main street back in the late 1920′s? According to a detailed account in ‘The Story of Wivenhoe’, in 1927 Foresters Hall was turned into a cinema, with a raked floor and projection box , its own generator to produce the extra power needed for the projection and musical accompaniment (for the films were all silent) provided by a ‘Panotrope’ (record player).
Films were shown Mondays Thursdays Fridays and Saturdays at 6pm plus a Childrens Matinee on Saturdays at 2.3o in the afternoon. The three hour programme was changed twice weekly and comprised two features with an intermission between, allowing patrons to buy ‘sweets, cigarettes, chocolates and monkey nuts’.
According to Butler in The Story of Wivenhoe the cinema was owned by a group including Albert Purkins landlord of The Plough public house in Colchester, and run on a day to day basis by a Suffolk man: Cecil Riches who did publicity, electrics, cleaning and maintenance, with the assistance of 16 year old Jack Hatch as projectionist.
The venture became the ‘Wivenhoe Cinema Company’ in 1929 but closed due to declining attendance and competition from Colchester in the summer of 1930.
What do you remember?
We wonder if anyone in the Wivenhoe or Rowhedge area remembers the cinema or having heard accounts of cinema-going here from older family members? Or do you remember any other old cinemas in the area? If you do we would be very interested to share these memories so please get in touch with us. We would like to hear YOUR accounts of a first trip to ‘the pictures’… Saturday morning matinees, special ‘birthday shows’ and going up on stage… ‘double bills’, serials like ‘Flash Gordon’ or newsreels like ‘Look At Life’…free gifts, and courting couples in the ‘back row’…
