Odeon Prestwich

The Bioscope of 9 Sept 1931 has an article about the Astoria. Above the entrance foyer there was a café for 150. Below the entrance foyer, due to the fall of the land (or excavation of the of the sloping site) there was a ‘lofty’ ballroom with a spectators' balcony. We tend to forget the customer-apartheid maintained by cinemas and theatres (even those built in the 1930s). Customers for the cheap front stalls seats had to descend a long flight of concrete steps down the side of the building to a less glamorous entrance nearer the stage.

It is the right photo. The view is Bury New Road on the south side of Sedgley Park, looking north. On the cinema site, the land dropped away from the road. I knew it only as a closed building. Patrons, walking in from the pavement, must have entered the building at the level of the lounges in the balcony void; and must have descended stairs to enter the stalls (yet the stalls side exits would have been at ground level). The auditorium is well back from the road, on the right of the photograph. The present (2015) Lidl supermarket site has been partially excavated; with its car park below the level of the road in the vicinity of the former cinema.