As a lot of discussion is going on in the "shops you no longer see" thread about old cinemas i thought i'd branch this one out.
I'd heard from few people (including Charlton Life's very own oggy red) that a cinema used to be in Welling high street and also one round the corner in Upper wickham lane. So i done some research and found some cracking photos them.
Granada Cinema, Welling
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldcinemaphotos/sets/72157603941969231/with/2277065882/Odeon Cinema, Welling
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldcinemaphotos/sets/72157603196165387/with/2034119817/All courtesy of dusashenka on Flickr, more pics on his page.
Comments
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21602076@N05/3130102993/
Some good pics there rizzo
I remember the song and the little ABC badges. Also bunking in through the fire escape down the alley at the side.
Was banned from the Granada Welling when I was 13, we bought a box of maltesers and spent most of the film lobbing them at the old boy sat at the front of Screen two. Screen 3 used to show "naughty" films.
I saw my first film there, it was The Spy who loved me.
Remember hordes of boys wandering around it late at night smashing whatever was in their path.
The trafalgar was called `The fleapit' for obvious reasons.
http://www.cannon.org.uk/cannoncinemas/cinemagallery/Catford_files/image004.jpg
Didn't realise mate, should we edit pictures out?
I spent a great deal of my youth at the ABC Bexleyheath and the Granada Welling.
Saturday Morning Pictures at the ABC in the late '60s early '70s- I would buy my copy of Whizzer & Chips in the newsagent next door and then queue up with the rest of the oiks and ragamuffins to sit through a programme comprised of Mighty Mouse cartoons, Flash Gordon serials (starring Larry "Buster" Crabbe) and fairly ropey British B-Movies.
In my teens I'd go at least once a week and see whatever was on:
-Double bills of all the James Bonds re-released in the mid '70s.
-Jumping out of my skin the first time I saw Jaws.
-Running home in slow motion with my mates after Chariots of Fire.
-Sitting through all 20+ minutes of the closing titles of Superman -The Movie.
-My first "X" Films - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest closely followed by Taxi Driver
-One Christmas, shopping with my dad on the Broadway we were both amused by the Sally Army band outside the cinema playing "Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel" outside the ABC which was, of course, showing Emmanuelle II.
I vividly remember the day the ABC (or the Cannon as it then was) finally closed in 1987. I made a point of going to the last performance in the evening - Crocodile Dundee. As I left, the staff, some of whom had been there since I was a kid were locking up and turning off the lights for the final time. I said a brief goodnight to them and walked off into the night turning my back on a huge part of my youth.
The end of an era
Found it.