Empire Cinema

In Woodstock, a village to the north-west of Oxford, in Oxfordshire, it is not known when the Electric Cinema opened, but it is thought to have been about 1922.

Years later a resident recalled it as a fairly basic, small building, with a flat floor and the projection box at the rear of the hall. On the right, just inside the auditorium, was a piano, played by Vivian (Viv) Wiggins, a local baker.

It is not known who owned the Electric Cinema at the beginning. Later on, the proprietors were H. P. Finkle (1927 to 1928), Murray Herrion (1929) and finally East Riding Picture Palace Ltd.

By then known as the Empire Cinema, this cinema closed in 1930 with Chaplin’s “The Kid”. It is assumed it was not considered worth converting it to sound.

The building was converted into Young’s garage. A former employee recalled the projection ports in the rear wall, and, in the 1950’s, of finding a large number of publicity pictures of silent film stars in the cellar when work was being carried out on the petrol tanks beneath the pumps. By 1973 the projection room behind the ports had been demolished.

The building was largely reconstructed in 1987 after it closed as a garage. It is now two retail units with a flat above, and no vestige of its cinematic past remains.

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