Silsden Picture Palace 1912 – 1959

Silsden Picture Palace remembered
By Ian Dewhirst (from KN 14 March 2013)

The Silsden Picture Palace opened in 1912 on the site of the garage of the Silsden Motor Omnibus Company Limited, burned out the year before (see Memory Lane, December 13).

This photograph, showing manager Frank Snowden on the left, has been supplied by Silsden local historian, W Neil Cathey, of King Street. “In 1918, the late Harold Kitchen was appointed as cinema pianist to accompany the silent movies,” he says, “and it appears that the Palace was staffed by a number of legendary characters, with an individual style of keeping order among excitable early audiences”.

Owned by local printer Clifford Briggs, it remained “a popular venue, especially for community events”. During the Second World War, when audiences watching a newsreel spotted local painter and decorator Irwin Shackleton marching with the Durham Light Infantry, the cinema reran the reel for the benefit of his wife and family. He was to die in action in Italy in 1944.

The Picture Palace closed in 1959 with a screening of Further Up the Greek, ironically being replaced by a TV tube-making firm before being converted into flats.