Russell Street in January 2022

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Uploaded on: January 20, 2022

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Red brick is an unusual building material in Keighley. Sandstone dominates. The red-brick building at the corner of Russell Street and Chapel Lane carries all the indications of a pre-WW1 cinema. It was not the Russell Street cinema, however. Keighley library holds plans for that building which was proposed as a cinema. They were refused in early 1912. The main entrance was to be on the lower corner; the one for cheap seats near the screen was to be roughly where ‘Gap between the buildings’ is indicated. There was to be a balcony for 125 and stall for 550. The new building was to abut the next up the street, which was labelled on the plans as “Present Picture Hall”. So the Russell Street Picture House was the considerably-altered sandstone building which is now three dwellings.

In the plans, the new cinema screen would have been on the wall against the “Present Picture Hall”. Inside, the walls to left and right of the screen were to be angled/splayed. In the triangle formed on the street side was to be the cheap seats' entrance; but the splay on the left was to be an angled outside wall. In the event the brick building went up omitting the splays, so it does not meet the next building. There is a closed-off gap between the two.

Alas, the picture house on Russell Street was, it appears, in a repurposed sandstone building.