Now there are plenty of stories yet to be told about the Rivioli or Essoldo on Barlow Moor Road. None of them are page turners but they were recounted by people who lived through the years of this now long gone cinema.
It was opened in 1937 and our own brass band played at the opening ceremony. My old friend Alan Brown was there and the icing on the cake was that he got into see Errol Flynn in Captain Blood which was one of his better swashbuckling movies. Made two years earlier it had got the lot, including the infamous Hanging Judge Jeffrey’s, wrongful arrest, the inevitable romance and of course the triumph of good over bad.
The Rivoli was last to be built and was aimed at the new council estates which were being built south of Chorlton. We forget that in the absence of TV picture houses were one of the main ways of entertainment when it was opened.
I guess this was why it was rebuilt after it had been bombed during the war. Now it might be possible to recreate the events of that night. There are records made by local ARP and defence volunteers who tracked aerial attacks as tracings on maps.
The destruction of houses around Corkland Road on May 1st 1941 were recorded and are in the National Archive and it is likely that there is a similar report of the stick of bombs which fell across Barlow Moor and Claude Road destroying the cinema and nearby houses. It is still possible to see the route of the aircraft from the new houses on Claude Road which stand out from their Edwardian neighbours.
The cinema was reopened in 1954 and as part of the advertising campaign the manager offered complimentary tickets for the restaurant. Ida Bradshaw remembers her father receiving tickets and getting off work early to attend. She tells me it continued to run through the rest of the ‘50s and was popular as a lunch time venue.
But it is the mystery surrounding the painting by J Montgomery that most fascinates me. I first wrote about the artist back in November http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2011/11/who-was-j-montgomery.html hoping that someone might know him. He painted pictures of Chorlton and Whalley Range during the late 1940s through to the mid ‘60s. Most if not all were painted from postcards or photographs which led me to wonder if was not local. There are a lot of his paintings in the digital archive of Manchester Library but so nothing has come to light, except one brief entry in a catalogue.
And it was there that I came across this one. It was painted according to the catalogue in 1965 and based on photograph taken in 1945. Looking at it it’s not clear what damage the cinema had sustained but perhaps it had been to the roof or the rear of the building. I have to admit it is not one of his best but if it is accurate it tells us something of what it had once looked like and the changes that were made in 1954.
The tile frontage was retained but the shape and size of the windows was dramatically altered as was the entrance. It is and may remain one of those little mysteries which does not matter over much but has got me wanting to know.
Now it is possible that a snap of the old place will turn up, it usually does, although a search through the local papers has drawn a blank.
Perhaps when it does it may also reveal something of J Montgomery including the picture he used. We shall see.
Pictures; The Rivoli by J Montgomery, 1976, m80107, and the Essoldo, R E Stanley m09200 May 1959, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council
It was opened in 1937 and our own brass band played at the opening ceremony. My old friend Alan Brown was there and the icing on the cake was that he got into see Errol Flynn in Captain Blood which was one of his better swashbuckling movies. Made two years earlier it had got the lot, including the infamous Hanging Judge Jeffrey’s, wrongful arrest, the inevitable romance and of course the triumph of good over bad.
The Rivoli was last to be built and was aimed at the new council estates which were being built south of Chorlton. We forget that in the absence of TV picture houses were one of the main ways of entertainment when it was opened.
I guess this was why it was rebuilt after it had been bombed during the war. Now it might be possible to recreate the events of that night. There are records made by local ARP and defence volunteers who tracked aerial attacks as tracings on maps.
The destruction of houses around Corkland Road on May 1st 1941 were recorded and are in the National Archive and it is likely that there is a similar report of the stick of bombs which fell across Barlow Moor and Claude Road destroying the cinema and nearby houses. It is still possible to see the route of the aircraft from the new houses on Claude Road which stand out from their Edwardian neighbours.
The cinema was reopened in 1954 and as part of the advertising campaign the manager offered complimentary tickets for the restaurant. Ida Bradshaw remembers her father receiving tickets and getting off work early to attend. She tells me it continued to run through the rest of the ‘50s and was popular as a lunch time venue.
But it is the mystery surrounding the painting by J Montgomery that most fascinates me. I first wrote about the artist back in November http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2011/11/who-was-j-montgomery.html hoping that someone might know him. He painted pictures of Chorlton and Whalley Range during the late 1940s through to the mid ‘60s. Most if not all were painted from postcards or photographs which led me to wonder if was not local. There are a lot of his paintings in the digital archive of Manchester Library but so nothing has come to light, except one brief entry in a catalogue.
And it was there that I came across this one. It was painted according to the catalogue in 1965 and based on photograph taken in 1945. Looking at it it’s not clear what damage the cinema had sustained but perhaps it had been to the roof or the rear of the building. I have to admit it is not one of his best but if it is accurate it tells us something of what it had once looked like and the changes that were made in 1954.
The tile frontage was retained but the shape and size of the windows was dramatically altered as was the entrance. It is and may remain one of those little mysteries which does not matter over much but has got me wanting to know.
Now it is possible that a snap of the old place will turn up, it usually does, although a search through the local papers has drawn a blank.
Perhaps when it does it may also reveal something of J Montgomery including the picture he used. We shall see.
Pictures; The Rivoli by J Montgomery, 1976, m80107, and the Essoldo, R E Stanley m09200 May 1959, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council
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