The Premier Electric Theatre in Somercotes, Derbyshire, hasn’t screened a movie since Bonfire Night 1960.
It was built for the local wine-merchant, George Beastall, and opened on New Year’s Day 1912. At first it seated only three hundred, with a modest entrance between two shops, but was quickly enlarged to seat more than a thousand.
When sound was installed in 1930 an imposing brick façade replaced the shops and the seating capacity was increased to 1,180.
George Beastall sold the cinema in the mid-1940s and it changed hands repeatedly until it was bought by Ollerton Pictures Ltd which subsequently acquired the Empire Theatre opposite the Premier, as well as other small picture houses in the nearby villages of Pinxton, Jacksdale and South Normanton.
In contrast to these four modest cinemas, the Premier was equipped to show Cinemascope films in 1954, which attracted an audience from a wide area.
Its fortunes fell after the evening show on November 5th 1960 when a fire broke out. Earlier, teenagers had been seen outside throwing lit fireworks through the emergency exits. The manager, Mr Percy Dennis, told the Nottingham Evening Post (November 7th 1960), “Perhaps I’d better not say what I really think of teenagers.”
Ollerton Pictures clearly intended to reinstate the damage at a cost of £10,000. Their spokesman told the Nottingham Evening Post (Monday February 20th 1961), “Pull it down? Not at all. We are so sure that there is a demand in this area that we are turning it into a virtually new cinema.”
However, a year later the Birmingham Post (February 12th 1962) reported, under a headline “NEW CINEMA SEATS NOT WORTH WHILE”, that refurbishment was delayed because of an apparent shortage of second-hand seats. There must have been many cinema closures at the time releasing redundant seating but the Premier spokesman declared, “There was such a lot of seat-slashing by teenagers before the cinema closed that it would not be worthwhile to put in new seats.”
The building stayed dark until Walker’s Bingo Clubs made it comfortable for their purposes and opened it in 1974. An image on the Somercotes Local History Society website shows how it looked during “eyes down”. Walker’s Bingo eventually closed in 2013.
By 2018 the empty building had been converted to a cannabis farm, and in 2020 architects Windsor Patania submitted plans to demolish the auditorium and construct a three-storey block of twenty apartments, while restoring the 1930 foyer block.
This would have involved removing the fine “PREMIER ELECTRIC THEATRE” plasterwork from the blank wall facing Victoria Street.
Nothing came of this and the local community is making a heroic effort to revive the building and make it useful: Derbyshire community event to save historic theatre and cinema.
Images on the ‘Reawaken the Premier Electric Theatre’ Facebook page indicate the dire state of the interior, suggesting that Councillor Jason Parker’s estimate of £4 million to put the place in order won’t leave much small change.
Nevertheless, there are cinema buildings in Britain that have been restored by the commitment of volunteers backed by experts who know what they’re doing. The tiny Harwich Electric Palace became a lair for feral cats before reopening for film in 1981. The vast New Victoria Cinema, Bradford, rescued after a thousand supporters joined hands in a “Hug the Odeon” demonstration, is about to reopen as a live music venue, and the Stockport Plaza has been pulling in the crowds since it reopened in 2000.
Such schemes don’t always work out. The Bronte Cinema in Haworth is in the same state as it was when I found it in 2016, despite occasional local expressions of interest. And, of course, there have been disasters like the Derby Hippodrome Theatre.
But I’d never underestimate the potential of volunteers with energy and flair – and expert backing – to bring dilapidated buildings back into use.