Located on the corner of Deptford High Street and Hyde Street. The Deptford Electric Palace opened on 24th December 1910. The front entrance was created out of an existing building, which had most likely previously been a shop. The auditorium seating 625, was built at the rear, along Hyde Street. Hence the local but un-official naming of the site. In late-1912, the auditorium was extended in an unusual way, with the cheap seats at the screen end, as well as being in the main body of the hall, were also now in an annex to the side of the main building, thus giving those sitting on the extreme front side seats an extremely distorted view of the screen. Tragedy struck during a children's matinee performance on 28th April 1917 when a false alarm of 'Fire' sent an over capacity crowd of 1,007 in panic towards the exits. After order had been established, the bodies of four children were found crushed to death. In 1945, it was re-named Palace Cinema. Always independently operated, the Palace Cinema was closed on 18th December 1954 with Charles Starrett(The Durango Kid) in "The Lone Hand" and Mikel Conrad in "Untamed Women". After sitting empty and 'For Sale for a while, it was converted into a supermarket. But this was only to last until the early-1960's when it became a bingo club. In 1989, it was converted into a snooker club, which remains open in 2009 as Shades Snooker & Pool Club.
This website is dedicated to the past History of Deptford. If you have any stranger than fiction stories about Deptford I would welcome your input. This may include stories of the people, the places still here or long gone, the characters, the war years, ghost stories and haunted places, ancient buildings and bygone memories, long forgotten. You can contact me with your stories at axelgs1@yahoo.co.uk
Wednesday 4 November 2009
Tuesday 3 November 2009
Albury Street Then and Now!!
This picture shows how the street looked in the late 60's. You can see on the lefthand picture where the porches were removed. Some, I have been told were stolen. Others were removed for safe storage. In the picture on the left the second lamp post on the right was just outside my nans house No. 29. I remember this because we use to use it as a wicket when playing cricket. Many times we hit the ball over Pickford's Removal gates which were opposite. It all gone now. My thanks to dusashenka's for permission to publish this photo. Visit the web site it has some great pic's. heres the link http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldcinemaphotos/
Saturday 31 October 2009
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