History

Built in 1913, The Alhambra is one of the UK’s original picture houses, showing films to local and visitor audiences almost continuously since opening a year later.

It’s a family owned, independent cinema just off the main town square in Keswick.

Fully updated with digital and laser projectors and Dolby sound it is a vibrant part of today’s Keswick entertainment scene.

It all started in 1913 when, with £2,000 in capital, the “Keswick Alhambra Theatre Company” was registered.

Local family building firm, I Hodgson and Son, set about rapid demolition of the three terraced houses on the current site and the construction of the new building.

Opening night was the 22nd January, with the film “Quo Vadis”. At least it should have been opening night, but a technical hitch meant the film couldn’t be shown, and the film was actually first shown the following evening, once a spare part had been rushed to Keswick by train overnight.

Not everyone was enthusiastic, Keswick’s Canon Rawnsley vehemently opposed the idea, worried about the “abuses of cinema” which included “incitements to dissipation, grossness, illicit passions, theft, robbery, arson and homicide by the presentation of moving pictures dealing with sensational, sometimes erotic, and criminal incidents.”

Films were classified in a simple manner. U films were suitable for all, whereas children had to be accompanied by an adult to watch an A rated film. Local kids found ingenious ways to get themselves into the films they wanted to see, including begging random adults in the queue “will you take us in please” (which inspired the title of a book with a detailed history of the cinema written by Ian Payne to mark its 100th anniversary which is available for sale at the cinema).

Movies were silent in the early years, and at The Alhambra a pianist would accompany the film to add drama. Occasionally, and for special occasions, a small band performed instead.

Robert Weightman, a Keswick local remembered this time:

"There was a pianist called Titchy Byers ... some of the children that were here used to get sweets opposite at Houghtons and they used to throw them and nuts at him while he played... A lot of them got thrown out!"

- Robert Weightman, Keswick local

The first talking picture ever to be made was “The Jazz Singer”. Released in 1927 and starring Al Johnson, billed as “the world’s greatest entertainer”, it played that year at The Alhambra but the owners hadn’t invested in the sound facilities to play it in its full glory. Keswick audiences enjoyed the film voiced instead live in the cinema each night by Mr Fred Bucknall, a popular Yorkshire baritone. Many cinemas were sceptical about the new talkies, and it was some time before The Alhambra installed its first sound system.

That same year, the lease of the building was taken on by the Simpson family, who ran The Alhambra as a cinema together with two other Keswick entertainment venues, a dance hall and cinema next to the river called The Pavillion and a concert hall called The Victoria on Borrowdale Road. The Simon family’s association with The Alhambra would go on to span several decades.

“Talkies” with the original sound finally arrived at The Alhambra in December 1930 and the first talking film screened here was “The Gold Diggers of Broadway”.

Television reception in Keswick remained limited and anyway few people had a TV at home and so The Alhambra remained the key venue for the coverage of the death of King George VI, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and her tour of the Commonwealth.

The Graves family oversaw a number of physical and technological changes during their ownership of The Alhambra, and their involvement with the cinema would go on to last for nearly sixty years. The sweet shop and advance booking office, which had been a separate building to the left of the cinema, was sold and converted back into a house, and a new ticket and refreshment kiosk was built inside the cinema itself facing the entrance doors. The balcony was refloored and new, individual, seats were fitted. The projector’s carbon arc lamps were updated to the latest Xenon lamps and a larger screen together with Cinemascope was installed, which together with the installation of the cinema’s first Dolby sound system, made for a much improved cinema experience.

The cinema had 11 screenings per week, with a wide range of films, but by the late 1960s cinema audiences were dwindling and The Alhambra was threatened with closure for the first time. Concerned picture goers launched a petition to keep the cinema open, and the Graves family’s pragmatic solution was to draw from their experience at other venues and help The Alhambra remain in business by adding bingo to the weekly repertoire. So from 1967, Monday and Friday became bingo nights with Bingo machines fitted to the seats on the left hand side of the stalls.

The first Keswick Film Festival, run by the Film Club, took place in February 2000, an event that has run every year since. The festival has seen many famous attendees and participants over the years, including Ken Loach, Nicholas Roeg, Andrea Arnold and Dame Janet Suzman. Producer Anwen Rees-Myers brought both a film and her Husband, John Hurt, to the festival, and Sir John later became the festival’s Patron, presenting prizes for ”The Ospreys”, the festival’s annual short film competition. In 2006 the Film Club won the “Film Society of the Year” award.

In 2006 another local family became involved in the running of The Alhambra as Alan Towers took on the lease of the business together with The Alhambra cinema in Penrith from the Graves family. The two Alhambra cinemas each benefitted from a refit, inheriting the seats from the Lonsdale cinema in Carlise which was being demolished.

As a single screen cinema, The Alhambra was hampered in its ability to survive, being restricted by the increasingly onerous terms of the film distributors and at risk of either having too few films on offer to be seen as interesting or not having films screened on release and hence being seen as out-of-date.

Single screen cinemas across the country were struggling to survive, indeed many had closed, and the family was aware of just how vulnerable The Alhambra was to any shock or downturn. Tom’s low-cost business model had proven successful at enabling the cinema to survive through yet another dark period, but in 2020 along came the Coronavirus and the cinema was obliged to close. Tom had largely stepped back and his daughter and son-in-law were running the cinema but were suffering from the lack of stable income from the business. The future of The Alhambra was again in doubt and the family were not able to make the kind of changes or investment that were necessary.

Not for the first time in its hundred-year history The Alhambra badly needed an injection of new blood and luckily a new family expressed an interest in becoming involved. The Moore-King family brought project management and marketing skills and commercial experience that would prove to be just what The Alhambra needed next.

In 2021 a new business plan was written, which required an investment of over £300,000 to build and equip a second screen, together with a remodelling of the cinema reception and kiosk area. It was clear to both families that this was the only way to grow the business, put it onto a safe footing and ensure it would remain viable.

With no possibility to expand outwards or upwards, during 2021 the second screen was squeezed into the middle of the building underneath the balcony.