Credits roll for picture palace

Nov 22 2007 by Larry Neild, Liverpool Daily Post

Larry Neild talks to the campaigners fighting to save a 90-year-old cinema from the bulldozers

IT REALLY is The End for Liverpool’s first purpose-built cinema, which was thriving at the very dawn of an era of the great picture palaces.

The final curtain came down at the Bedford Hall cinema almost half a century ago, but now the hidden screen gem finally faces the bulldozer.

With its impressive carved stone facade, the old picture house is looking worse for wear in a Walton side street.

Inside, many of the original features remain intact, with the cinema’s once vast auditorium used as a furniture emporium.

Despite its sorry state, the old Bedford has attracted the attention of the Cinema Theatre Association, which hails the place as iconic in cinematic history, one of just five of its generation still standing in the UK.

Catherine Fitzpatrick lives in Walton, and remembers going to The Bedford on many occasions when she was younger.

“It was a lovely cinema and I still remember going to see Calamity Jane with Doris Day. Everyone joined in the singing, it was so wonderful.

“Another time, I was leaving and got to the end of the row of seats and knelt down to bless myself. I forget I was in the cinema and thought it was in the church.

“I suppose it depends on what is going to be built on the site if the cinema is pulled down. It has been closed as a picture palace for so long now.”

The owner of the building, Mr F Bell, wants to demolish the Bedford and replace it with nine three-storey townhouses and a three-storey block of apartments.

Planning managers recommended the scheme should be given the go-ahead. But after protests from preservationists, the council’s planning committee deferred a decision. They plan to visit Walton on December 4 to see the building before making a final decision.

English Heritage has recently refused to list the building to give it protection from demolition, though the government’s Department for Communities and Local Government is currently considering an appeal against this refusal.

A report to planning councillors reveals that the cinema is only one of five built in the UK in 1910 which have their frontages intact.

The cinema is unique in the country because of its own ornate waiting room, added as an extension in 1924.

The Cinema Theatre Association has posted details of the threat to the cinema on its website in the hope of generating support to save the building.

The association tells the council: “Bedford Hall is an important and very rare purpose- built cinema. The building is in good original condition with the street frontage entirely intact. It is of great architectural, social and historical merit.”

Records at Liverpool Central Library report that, despite its opening date listed as 1910, it opened as a cinema on Boxing Day 1908 as Liverpool’s first purpose built cinema.

Florence Gersten, of the Save Our Cities Campaign, said: “This is yet another example of a historic building facing demolition. It is a beautiful and rare example of early cinema architecture and deserves to be preserved. The outside is perfectly preserved and many of the internal features survive to this day.”

Merseyside cinema historian Harold Ackroyd, in his book The Dream Palaces of Liverpool, reveals that the cinema showed silent movies until 1930 when a sound system was added. It was opened by cinema entrepreneur John F Wood, who formed the Bedford Cinemas company and ran a chain of Merseyside picture houses.

It closed on May 23, 1959, one of the early victims of the television era.

larryneild