A Brief History Through the Decades

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 1914, 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).

1920s

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 used to get sweets and nuts from Houghtons opposite the cinema and throw them at him while he played. A lot of the kids then got thrown out.”

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.

1930s

“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”.

As war broke out, Keswick, as a rural community, remained a safe haven for holidays and honeymoons. As well as hosting evacuees the army ran a driving school in nearby Portinscale, and several hotels were taken over by St Katherine’s teacher training college and Rodean School. The cinema was popular as the place to see newsreels and public information films, informing as well as educating and entertaining audiences. One evacuee to the area, Margaret Bragg, recalls that children could get free seats for some Saturday screenings when the cinema held “waste paper drives”. The weight of waste paper contributed determined the class of seat awarded, and one  local lad cunningly brought a very heavy parcel of paper which turned out to be hiding his family’s bible with its large and heavy brass clasp. He had initially been put in one of the best seats upstairs, though when the bible was discovered his father came swiftly to collect both it and his son.

1940s

Saturday matinees were an event in themselves, a raucous affair full of unaccompanied children. Des Oliver, a Keswick local remembers the front rows being full of screaming kids who’d paid 2d to sit and watch films such as “The Lone Ranger” and who would then run off to the local woods afterwards to recreate the scenes they’d just watched. Margarte Furness, an evacuee from Newcastle, recalls seeing “The Wizard of Oz” with friends and then cycling four abreast down the Borrowdale Road singing “We’re off to see the Wizard” at the top of their voices.

Local films occasionally featured and Moss, a sheepdog from Threlkeld, together with his owner J Relph enjoyed a standing ovation when they appeared in person at The Alhambra as the local stars in a screening of the film about them called “Border Collie”.

1950s

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.

In 1957 the business was sold by the Simpson family to the Graves family, who owned and ran cinemas, dance and bingo halls across several nearby towns.

1960s

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.

1970s

It was a lean decade for The Alhambra and for British cinemas in general. Audiences’ appetite for entertainment developed into other channels. Alternative music, disco and theatre venues developed and the newly opened A66, together with and an increase in car ownership, made the attractions of larger, nearby towns increasingly accessible. By the end of the decade there were no shows at all at The Alhambra on Saturdays and the cinema was only open for four evenings each week.

1980s

With the cinema in trouble, Barbara Graves took over responsibility for it in 1982 and immediately made a huge effort to address the dire situation. She organised a face lift of the interior, and shrewdly identified the importance of the visitor market, working hard to encourage local hotels and B&Bs to promote the cinema to their guests. She implored locals to “use it or lose it” and persuaded her family to allow The Alhambra to show more first run films. At the time, films would be physically sent to cinemas on reels, and cinemas in larger towns would receive them first, and be known therefore as first run cinemas, whereas those in smaller towns like Keswick would only then receive the films later. The consequent success of her idea proved her point, with the first example, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”, seeing queues of people down the side of the cinema and all four screenings selling out on its first day.

In low season, even this approach could not keep the cinema running throughout the year and until 1989, the cinema would close for the winter from November through to March.

1990s

The Alhambra was being run on a shoestring budget in order to survive, with Barbara supported by just one usherette on each floor, a person on the ticket counter and a projectionist. She appointed Tom Rennie in 1991 who managed the cinema with an even smaller staff, backed up by the hugely competent Joan Green, an Alhambra stalwart who had been working at the cinema since the 1970s.

In 1999 the Keswick Film Club was set up by Tony Martin to bring more eclectic, often foreign language, films to The Alhambra. The Film Club quickly became a success, screening a weekly film through the winter months.

2000s

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.

2010s

Alan concluded in 2012 that The Alhambra cinema in Keswick was unviable, and the cinema would have closed down at that point were it not for Tom Rennie, who had by then been running the cinema for its various owners for over twenty years. Tom took a five year lease and set about stabilising the business. The Alhambra is highly dependent on the visitor audience and, with a stroke of Lake District luck, he was rewarded with the perfect combination of a damp summer and a strong film choice. The new James Bond “Skyfall” together with “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” were both hugely popular and gave his venture a great start. Tom focused on keeping costs low, which was helped by the switch from showing 35mm film on reels to automated digital projection.

National Theatre Live had been launched four years before The Alhambra finally, in 2013, added the capability to show its live performances via satellite. The first screening in June that year saw Helen Mirren’s critically acclaimed performance as H.M.The Queen in the play “The Audience”, beamed directly from London’s Geilgud Theatre to audiences in Keswick.  

The Alhambra celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2014, fittingly via the medium of film, as local film maker Joel Baker’s film “Lights, Camera…Alhambra!” was premiered at the Century Film Festival.

In 2016 Tom Rennie’s lease on the building was coming to an end and the Graves family agreed to sell the building to him. At 73 years of age Tom, undaunted, saw this as an opportunity.

Over the next few years improvements were made, including the introduction of online booking and a wider choice of films. In 2019, a crowd-funded renovation of the auditorium revealed many of the original features of the cinema that, over the years, had been hidden under ever-increasing layers of paint.

2020s

As a single screen cinema, The Alhambra was hampered in its ability to survive. Single screen cinemas across the country were closing, and the owners were aware of just how vulnerable The Alhambra was to any shock or downturn. The low-cost business model been successful at enabling the cinema to survive, but as its equipment and décor was becoming outdated, the cinema was not meeting audience expectations. It was clear that significant investment could not be postponed forever, and then along came the Coronavirus and the cinema was legally required to close down completely.

Not for the first time in its hundred-year history The Alhambra needed an injection of new energy and ideas. Again, a new family expressed interest in becoming involved and had the project management, marketing skills, commercial experience and work ethic that would prove to be just what was needed. In 2021 they bought a half-share of the business and, taking a big risk, invested their life-savings so that a second screen could be added and the cinema reception and kiosk area be remodelled. It was clear to everyone that such an investment was the only way to grow the business, put it onto a safe footing and ensure it would remain viable.

The additional screen was designed to interfere as little as possible with the existing auditorium, thereby maintaining its original stalls and balcony layout, something which so few cinemas retain today. Carefully engineered, the second screen sits on separate foundations and is underneath the balcony of the main auditorium. With its extensive soundproofing, and despite the building’s historic nature, the two screens are acoustically completely separated.

The new foyer area is a stylish improvement and finally offers space for customers to linger, for conversations about films, vintage cinemas and of course the weather to be enjoyed by all, and to enable the much more welcoming and friendly atmosphere that is so tangible today.  

At the same time, and through the generosity of the cinema’s supporters, the building’s stunning red brick façade was cleaned and repointed. Removing all the concrete mortar that had been used for repairs over time and repointing with lime mortar let the building breathe properly again and eliminated damp on the walls. Surviving timber windows were restored and new, matching ones refitted where openings had been bricked up or windows had rotted. New lighting was installed and the two stained glass feature round windows were meticulously repaired by local craftspeople.

In October 2021 the reopening film was the appropriately named new James Bond film “No Time To Die”. Queues were again seen down the side of the cinema as people excitedly waited to see the newly refurbished cinema and enjoy a great Bond film.

The second screen has enabled the cinema to show a far wider range of films and to be in a stronger position when negotiating with the all-powerful film distributors. Together with improvements made to the reception area and the upgraded drinks and refreshments menu the changes have put the cinema onto a stronger and safer path. 

In February 2025 the annual Keswick Film Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary with a richly curated programme that was, as is typically the case, packed with the films that went on to win major awards. Thanks to the festival Keswick audiences remain some of the first to see, what later turn out to be, the greatest of films each year.

Today the cinema is fully owned by the Moore-King family who have been able to put a robust business plan in place and hence confidently commit themselves to the further investments needed to keep the cinema thriving.

In 2026 the main auditorium has also been upgraded to the latest high definition, energy-efficient laser projector together with a bigger screen and better sound system. With a new eco-friendly heat exchange and ventilation system and further repairs to the fabric and interior décor of the building still to come, under their ownership the Alhambra Cinema will continue to be a venue that everyone can enjoy and that Keswickians can be proud of.

Packed with original and vintage features, the latest in cinema technology, the best films and events and a team that provides the warmest of welcomes we hope you’ll find The Keswick Alhambra Cinema thoroughly enjoyable to visit.

Jonathan Moore, Graham King and the Alhambra Cinema Team