2025 - November and December - page 40
Image details
| Issue number | 404 |
|---|---|
| ISSN | 2632-7171 |
| Publication date | 1st November 2025 |
| Transcription |
magazine Community News The Electric Palace Archive The Electric Palace is the oldest, least-altered cinema in the country, if not the world. It was commissioned by the showman Charles Thurston who ran fairs around the country and had a succession of extremely popular tent- based Bioscope Shows. Upon the introduction of the 1908 Cinematograph Act, film exhibition was required by law to be exhibited in purpose- built cinemas. Thus, the Electric Palace was designed by Harold Ridley Hooper and opened in November 1911. It closed in 1956 due to competition from three other cinemas locally. In 1972 it was rediscovered, awaiting demolition, by a historian of architecture and a community group was hastily formed to protect and save it. The archive of the Electric Palace was established in 2024, thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund award, with a team of three hired, consisting of: myself as Archivist, a Project Manager and an Education and Community Officer. The team has been busy creating an archive from scratch, with a handful of volunteers, who have been preparing the material for cataloguing to our collection management system. Thanks to our previous Chairman, who saved everything relating to his work saving the cinema, there is a glut of material to catalogue. The archive includes communications; 40 Above: The interior of the cinema taken in 1912. Note the ‘cheap seats’ down the front. ©Harwich Electric Palace Trust Below: The interior as it was found gutted and vandalised when the cinema was ‘rediscovered’ in 1972. ©Harwich Electric Palace Trust |