Heeley Green, picture house.

As a kid I spent quite a few hours in the Heeley green cinema, but understood it was originally built as a theater.

With it's mock Elizabethan front I always thought it looked a bit to posh to be a picture house and wondered about it's history.

Never went behind the curtain so to speak but it apparently still had it's dressings rooms back there..

I just wondered if any one knew what kind of theater is was , Empire or Crucible, and did any one ever hear or read of any of the show it had put on....

according to a local book about theatres and cinemas, it had many changes of use right back to its earlier days. Spending a few years as a theatre, then years as both a theatre and cinema, then bingo for a few years post war.

Here are some pics I took of it

http://thewookie.co.uk/cinemas/cinepho8.html

Not at all as I remember the front of it, but still a nice looking little theater, a pity it never got used as one instead of Bingo.

Last I heard just before it burned down it was a snooker hall, what a shame...

It was potter's snooker for about 20 years, I was a member and it was a nice snooker club. They even had a pleasent bar where the guinness was excellent. I was very annoyed when it was torched.

My late grandparents lived further up Gleadless Rd. but I remember it being mentioned many times by family members that they used to take in boarders and professional acts appearing at the Heeley Green, this would be in the early 1900s.

I first saw the King and I at that theater, and my sister and i used to go on Saturday mornings we lived on Tillitson Road, around 1956/1957 our name was Warburton, our grandma lived in the first house in Gleadless Road,

My late grandparents lived further up Gleadless Rd. but I remember it being mentioned many times by family members that they used to take in boarders and professional acts appearing at the Heeley Green, this would be in the early 1900s.

That's the first time I heard anyone say it had been used as a live theater.

As you said acts and not actors I take it it was a variety theater then ?

It would have been a little bit out of the way though, up there in those days

I first saw the King and I at that theater, and my sister and i used to go on Saturday mornings we lived on Tillitson Road, around 1956/1957 our name was Warburton, our grandma lived in the first house in Gleadless Road,

My husband's Grandmothers maiden name was Warburton and they lived in Heeley.

Yes they did live in the Heeley area,

My husband's Grandmothers maiden name was Warburton and they lived in Heeley.

Fond memories of the Heeley Green. As a kid used to go twice a week with Grandma or an aunt and a bag of toffees and remember hoping the film would never end so's I didn't have to go home to our cold little house.

You could sit in a box for the same price as upstairs, but not many did because you were off to the side.

I've collected most of the old films I saw there, the Heeley Palace and the Carleton, and now if I turn down the lights I can re-live the experience all over again on my big screen TV. Just need the red exit signs to make it complete, LOL

Later us kids from Heeley Bank School would all go, Janet Warburton, Janet Dungworth, Silvia Hough, Janet Beck, Maureen (Little Mo) Reaney, Pat Brownhill. Lots of Warburtons, Whittakers around Heeley and I think they were all related.

Those, as they say, were the days!

Wow that sounds so like it was yesterday, lol, strange how certain things stay with us, we moved on to the Hackenthorpe when i was about 6, my sister was about 11, then we moved to the Gleadless Valley and I was there till i moved to Miami USA, but mum was there till she passed in 2007, and i would go back every year to visit, with my kids. I remember pulling up the tin tub, on Friday nights for bath night by the fire in the living room, mum would boil water on the stove, and dad always had the first bath,lol. Toilet was up the path outside when i tell my kids the storys they just cant picture that lol a toilet outside never heard of such a thing lol but memories i will never forget, my dads family the Warburtons had lots of relatives all in the area, but, he passed away in his early years only 36 in an accident at work (Firth Vickers) he was electricuted on the job. So mum raised us alone but never did we have a bad day. Yes those were the days for sure.

The Heeley Green Picture House was built in a mock Tudor style by M. J. Gleeson and the cinema opened on Easter Monday, April 5, 1920. For some years from 1930 it became a theatre staging vaudeville and variety acts but reverted to being a cinema on May 9 1938, it seated 869 and closed March 7 1959. Afer an unsuccessful bid for the property it re-opened on April 3, 1961 under the name of Tudor and closed finally June 3, 1962 and as previously stated became a bingo hall and later a snooker club.

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My grandparents lived at 279 Gleadless Rd. the house having been rebuilt since then but I remember as a child visiting on a regular basis, there must have been around at least eight houses in the yard each with its own outside toilet which were built in a line up the yard and all with their own lock and key, about four of the houses had a Jeffrey St address, the others were G-Rd., there was also a communal wash-house which was spotless and was used on allocated washdays. Across Gleadless Rd. was a bomb-site where I used to go and play, and oh I nearly forgot we used to call at Taggys on the way there.