Electric Palace Cinema, Harwich

Other interesting features include an open plan entrance lobby complete with paybox, and a small stage plus dressing rooms although the latter are now unusable.

[4] In November 2006, British actor Clive Owen became patron of the cinema and at his first official visit he helped launch an appeal to raise funds to repair this historic building.

In May 2021 the Electric Palace was used as a location for Downton Abbey: A New Era[5] In the early years of the 20th century the travelling fairground Showman Charles Thurston was touring East Anglia with his Bioscope shows.

[7][8] The Electric Palace was built in 18 weeks at a cost of £1,500 and opened on Wednesday, 29 November 1911, the first film being "The Battle of Trafalgar and The Death of Nelson".

This proved to be the 'last nail in the coffin', and the Palace closed after 45 years of operation, following a final showing of the Glynis Johns comedy: "Mad about Men", on 3 November 1956.

For the next 16 years the building lay abandoned and largely forgotten until in 1972 it was "discovered" by Gordon Miller of Kingston Polytechnic, who was leading a group of students on a survey of Harwich.

He was amazed to find this virtually unaltered relic of the early period of cinema architecture lying forgotten in a Harwich side-street.

He was also disturbed to discover that the town council was intending to demolish the entire block of which the cinema was a part to provide additional parking space for lorries.

The local newspaper carried letters variously describing the building as "a derelict flea-pit of no interest", or as "a potential asset to the town".

[10] Meanwhile, Gordon Miller researched the history of the building from the council archives, contemporary newspaper reports and interviews with surviving members of the Electric Palace staff.

In April 1975 the Electric Palace Trust was formed with the avowed aim of restoring the building so that it could, again, be used as a fully operational cinema.

The grand re-opening on 29 November 1981, the 70th anniversary of the original opening, was filmed by the BBC for their children's programme "Blue Peter".

The venue was regularly played by a wide spectrum of entertainers including acrobats, burlesques, conjurors, hypnotists, impersonators, singers, patterers, knockabouts mimics, dancers and comedians.

Billy Good, who was later the resident pianist, remembered well Will Fyffe's appearances at the Palace and it seems that they were an exception since most of the variety acts between 1915 and 1918 were either juveniles or those too old for active service in the World War.

In the golden age of the Electric Palace society was still fairly rigidly stratified into classes and this reflected in the seating arrangements.

One doorman remembered the rush being so great that he ended up flat on his back with the children stampeding over him as in a Mack Sennett comedy – and most of them getting in for nothing!

Great play is made of the superb ventilation, the regular disinfection of the auditorium, the sedate and orderly composure of the clientele, and the exclusiveness of the films.

Billy Good, the pianist from 1920–1922 recalled the very long hours worked by all the staff and particularly himself arduously craning up at the screen from the rather dingy pit recessed into the floor in front of the stage.

However, the 'pit neck ache' didn't matter since he was 100% engrossed in the music and loved every minute of it playing two houses every night except Sunday for £1-15s–0d.

He poked his head over the pit rail and said "You young rascal, you've got a bloody cheek" which under the circumstances was rather appropriate, and possibly literally true.

Since reopening in 1981, the cinema has been managed by a limited company which is a subsidiary of the Harwich Electric Palace Trust that owns the building.

[12] The cinema has no subsidies except for very special events when a grant makes it was possible to present a gala screening, for example of a silent classic with live orchestral accompaniment.

The cost of the new digital equipment was estimated at £55,000 and the Electric Palace Trust aimed to raise the money by November 2011 when the cinema celebrated its centenary.