They were small, shabby and sometimes a bit smelly. But small, local cinemas were also a formative joy for generations of movie-goers. There was a time when most towns had one: a small local cinema with one or perhaps two screens. Some larger towns even had more than one. For this writer, growing up in ... The fading joy of small town cinemas
They were small, shabby and sometimes a bit smelly. But small, local cinemas were also a formative joy for generations of movie-goers.
There was a time when most towns had one: a small local cinema with one or perhaps two screens. Some larger towns even had more than one.
For this writer, growing up in a moderately-sized Northamptonshire market town in the 1980s, it was The Palace. A few minutes’ walk from my house, it had two screens at one stage – absurdly small by modern multiplex standards. The seats were the old flip-down sort, and the room’s slope was so shallow that if anyone remotely tall sat in front of you, then you’d be watching the back of their head as much as the movie you’d paid to see.
Up until 1985, when the first ever multiplex opened in the UK, these sorts of cinemas were how generations of people saw movies. Even afterwards, this remained true for many: if you didn’t have access to a car or happen to live near a city, then you’d probably end up visiting these local fleapits, many of which had been around since at least the 1930s.
The Palace itself had a long life before it became a cinema. In the 1900s, it was apparently some sort of wooden shed dedicated to roller skating. Then a music hall called The Empire was built on the same spot, but was burned down within months; in its place came The Palace, a traditional theatre that also had a side hustle in showing movies. According to Cinema Treasures, Charlie Chaplain even crept the boards here early in its life.
It’s fascinating to learn how The Palace moved with technology and viewing tastes. It had a fancy sound system fitted in 1930 to acommodote the first ‘talkies’ coming through; by the 1950s, it was capable of showing CinemaScope movies. Apparently, the cinema’s owners managed to squeeze three separate screening rooms – no mean feat, given that the building never had a particularly large footprint. The smallest room had 166 seats; the largest 464 seats.
I was too young to remember those days, though, since by the 1980s, The Palace had been reconfigured again, with the larger Screen One being turned into a snooker club and bar. It was never a particularly fancy venue, but it must have been cheap; my mother would often pay for me to go and see an afternoon re-run of an old movie while she went and did the weekly shopping each Saturday.
Other parents must have done the same thing, because I recall it being utter bedlam; there didn’t appear to be another adult in the screening room, so kids would be running up and down the aisles and generally going berserk while a scratched print of, say, Herbie Rides Again played out on the screen. It was amazing.
Some of my formative movie-going experiences happened at The Palace. I saw Return Of The Jedi here when I was about six, and was utterly saucer-eyed at the scale of the thing – the weird aliens, the pace of the action, the spectacular final space battle. The sound and picture quality were probably terrible; to me, it didn’t matter. I was transported to such an extent that, when I asked afterwards how they made all those spaceships, I was genuinely saddened to learn that they were ‘little models’ rather than the real thing.
I can still remember the vast-seeming queues for some of the era’s biggest films – and the sinking disappointment you’d get when standing in line for a film, only to be turned away because the theatre was full. I didn’t get in to see E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982, but my best friend did; he came back and described what sounded to me akin to a religious experience. For years, his hushed account of the plot was all I had to go on – I didn’t see Spielberg’s sci-fi adventure until the filmmaker finally gave the go-ahead to release it on VHS in late 1988.
Again, The Palace wasn’t the fanciest of venues, but it was better than most. A neighbouring town, Kettering, had at least two cinemas. I have a vague recollection that one was located on a back street somewhere, and that I watched Short Circuit on a screen with a massive rip down one corner. I saw Innerspace either there or in a different town, and the projector broke down twice.
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For years, cinemas like these clung on as multiplexes spread and people began to expect more from a night out at the pictures. The Palace responded by offering cheap tickets on a week night; I saw the likes of Titanic, The Full Monty and Alien Resurrection for the princely sum of £1 each. I saw Michael Mann’s Heat there in 1995; it was the last time I ever remember there being an interval in the middle of a film. (I also took someone out on a date there that same year; I foolishly chose David Fincher’s Seven. We didn’t see each other again.)
One by one, however, these little theatres vanished, like lights turning off all over the country. The Palace finally succumbed to the inevitable and closed in the late 1990s. For years, it was a pub called The Cutting Room (an appropriately violent-sounding name, given how fighty it could get in there); now it’s a club called Play At The Palace. It hosted something called a ‘Motown Day party’ a few weeks ago, apparently.
Just to underline how changeable and cut-throat the film exhibiting business is, even the once cutting-edge cinemas that killed these little Edwardian theatres have also long gone. The Point in Milton Keynes was the UK’s first multiplex, and felt like something beamed in from the future when it opened in 1985: it was a gigantic pyramid of steel and glass. The ten-screen cinema closed down in 2015, and while there have been valiant campaigns to save it, this piece of film industry sits abandoned, unloved and threatened with demolition.
Back over in Kettering, the small, sometimes down-at-heel cinemas in the middle of town had their lunch stolen by the bigger venues on the outskirts – including the Odeon, an eight-screen cinema which opened in 1997. It closed down in January 2025, and has since been demolished. (The last film ever screened there, by the by, was the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown.)
It’s important not to get too nostalgic and rose-tinted-glasses about those old cinemas, but there was still something appealing and even useful about them in their heyday. They were affordable and easy to get to – so much so that going to see a movie became something you could do on a whim. You could take a punt, say, The Replacement Killers, because it was a Tuesday so you could see it for a quid. You and your friends could afford to go and see Executive Decision on a school night and then laugh about Steven Seagal’s brief appearance (and abrupt exit, stage left) afterwards over a beer.
Today, huge multiplexes are beginning to struggle somewhat as customers watch films at home. And while there’s absolutely a place for huge screens and IMAX experiences, I also wonder whether small, independent cinemas are making a comeback as a result.
As director Ben Wheatley pointed out to me earlier this year, the technology required to project a film onto a wall is cheaper than ever. “You can actually set up your own cinemas for much less money in a way that was impossible ten years ago,” he said. “You’re seeing it in things like The Nickel [in London] and various cinema clubs that are cropping up around the country. I think that change in cinema should always be grassroots.”
This article was largely inspired by a chap named Michael Druker on Bluesky. He recently asked what business you’d “want to start if you could afford to lose money on it.”
My mind immediately went to The Palace: the possibility of buying back the old building, reverting it back to a little cinema, and maybe showing old genre movies there. It’s a venture that would probably make a terrible loss within weeks of opening. But all the same, it’d be exciting to offer a simpler, more affordable sort of cinema. Or maybe I just really like the idea of pretending it’s 1987 again, and seeing Innerspace in a dark room that smells of stale popcorn.
Let’s end by throwing the story out to you, dear readers. What were your formative cinema experiences? Is the theatre you once went to still there? And if you could, would you open it back up again?
