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BRIXTON HILL CINEMATOGRAPH THEATRE
(1911-1957 )
101-103 Brixton Hill, London SW9
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The Brixton Hill Cinematograph Theatre was opened by Montagu Pyke as part of his cinema empire in 1911. In 1920 it became the New Royalty Kinema. I occasionally patronised it in the early 1950s but cannot remember what its name had become by then. I seem to recall seeing the (then) controversial 1953 Otto Preminger film The Moon is Blue there when the movie was fairly new, so it must have had access to some recent films as well as the usual long-in-the-tooth fleapit fare, though I remember the place as being rather basic and run-down.
The frontage still survives, though the auditorium behind has long been demolished. The building has an ornate canted bay at first-loor level with a half-dome below a broken-apex curved pediment featuring a central globe/urn-like feature. The ground-floor entrance has been altered but originally resembled a typically Edwardian shopfront with decorated pilasters and consoles either side of the gold-lettered fascia sign. After it closed down as a cinema the building became a camping showroom for many years and as shown in the above 2010 photograph is now the South Beach Bar and club. (Most of the above information has been kindly supplied by the London Borough of Lambeth's Archives Department) |
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