Empire Cinema

The Empire was closed for several months during 1973 while it was converted. It re-opened (I think with Disney’s Robin Hood) with a cinema occupying the balcony and a bingo hall in what was the stalls. The glass and iron canopy which appears in the photograph above was gone by the end of the 1960s. The site is now occupied by Farm Foods. Like many small local cinemas it often had one double-bill programme running from Monday to Wednesday, and another from Thursday to Saturday. On Sundays there would usually be a one-off double bill, either of Hammer or other horror films but in later days sometimes a pair of soft core films.