THIS INCLUDES A HISTORY OF CANTERBURY’S CINEMA AND THEATRES
Just after my previous Canterbury entry, a new cinema opened up which potentially changed my view of the city. It could even be enough to lure me to live there.
Canterbury now has three cinemas: a traditional Odeon in the town; a concrete university arts centre out of town; and now, the only cinema within the city walls: arthouse chain Curzon’s first branch outside of the capital.
Canterbury has been surprisingly harsh with its cinemas and theatres, with an attitude like the capital for tearing down and building anew with careless impatience. The city’s first theatre was an 18th century building in Orange St, which still stands and was known for many years as a shop called The Merchant Chandler. There was another on the site of Debenham’s on Guildhall street; then the first Marlowe, an early 20th century 16th century style building in St Margaret’s st which would have made a wonderful arts cinema. This brick and herringbone theatre was attached to a brutally modern one on the same site, now with the god of the mid century – the carpark. This lasted only a couple of decades before the site was sacrificed for the Marlowe arcade in the 1980s, close to the Canterbury Tales attraction. Note how many of these are now empty or destroyed.
The Marlowe theatre – now Canterbury’s only, save the Gulbenkian at the university on the hill – moved into the Odeon’s second 1930s building in the city. This was known as The Friars, due to its proximity to the Dominicans. (Today’s Odeon on St George’s Place was built as The Regal). This theatre acquired undesirable wings and a huge clunky tower to accommodate stage scenery. Then the Marlowe wanted another change, and it obliterated the city’s only noticeable surviving early 20th century building – its sister outside the walls keeps all its decoration on the inside.
I wondered if the once yellow picture house still resided within the glowing glass of the last decade. It does not, as demolition pictures attest. I don’t approve of the replacement.
Yet Canterbury now has what is quite rare, and often reserved for larger cities: a producing and new writing theatre, whose playwriting submissions were flagged up by the council’s email filters if they included swearwords – a problem for the local authority funded venue to swiftly fix.
I was thinking: has Canterbury got – or not got – all I wish for? As a playwright who enjoys seeing other people’s plays, and who does not enjoy multiplexes, I wondered if Canterbury’s screen offerings – now six over three quite different venues, all potentially appealing – might make this a city consider living in?
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There are now three arts cinema chains in Britain. Two were very London focussed, but all three suddenly have several tentacles throughout the land. Picturehouses began in Oxford in the late 1980s and now are heavily infested in London – perhaps half their growing portfolio. Everyman, formerly the Screen group, have also started leaking into the provinces; and for me are the least pleasing of the three. They just seem to be overpriced posh multiplexes, but often with small screens. Curzon are the oldest group, being 90 this year, and they have a distribution arm, like Picturehouses. They bought out Artificial Eye and also have home cinema. It was confusing as to which films on their website were available in cinemas. Generally – not the good ones.
I have been to Curzons before – the concretey central London two, and into Colchester’s bar; but these, like a creeper, have appeared in Yorkshire, and even north east Scotland, although the Bachory branch seems to be part time in the Barn arts centre (barely a byre!)
Was Canterbury, as their first provincial cinema, very auspicious? It’s in Westgate Hall road, which as a tiny cul de sac might not be meaningful to many, even those who know Canterbury. Yes it is near the Westgate Towers great medieval gate, between Pound and St Peter’s Lanes. And like Marlowe Mk II, it is surrounded by a carpark (and close to Canterbury West rail station).
So easy to get to, although not easy to find.
At first, I wondered if cinema had come home and full circle, for Canterbury’s first cinema was an Edwardian Electric close to Westgate, part of an odd business portfolio: movies and motors. The cinema building still exists, an old shopfront (once a pub), shorn of its theatrical awning.
I don’t know what’s inside – anything akin to the skinny 17th C Penny Theatre on Northgate, once indie club and still a bar? The Curzon is near, but not attached to this.
It seemed like a dull black box in the mould of Hastings’s Jerwood, but closer research and inspection revealed that it is part of and contemporary with the adjacent Westgate Hall. This is a former late 19th C military drill hall, which has undergone various uses and was recently under threat of demolition. The city council has retained this mindset from at least the last century: if it doesn’t seem useful and contemporary and it’s in the way and or not in good condition – bring it down. The body of a bombed medieval church – St George’s – was lost that way, and the Westgate itself was nearly pulled down for a travelling circus’ convenience.
Note that this was a transient relief, just like the below.
Because of its history and local associations, Westgate Hall has many supporters who did not want to see this venue be turned into carparking revenue and then turned over to developers.
They spent some years fighting for it, and the council – who wanted rid of the building – made this group submit business plans, plural, to satisfy them. Why did they need to know that something that you want to destroy and taken off your hands will be viable?
The Westgate group felt that they couldn’t raise the necessary capital on their own – due to our archaic and ironic beliefs about borrowing – and so when the Curzon group approached, it felt ideal. There was still a gap between this being accepted and the cinema opening in October 2014.
The hall – which sees itself as a village hall in the city – is operated separately. It’s a major point that the council were about to do away with the only such possible venue in the city. There is nowhere for the public to meet, since there’s no town hall; only the cathedral is a building of any capacity. In this city of three universities, many visitors and a cultural focus for East Kent, there are but two arts centres and one nightclub that’s not for students (hilariously in a former loo, called The Privy). Since the Corn Exchange was bombed – they chose not to save the city’s one public Georgian building – there is nowhere like this for fairs, dances, blood giving, hall hiring… all of which the Westgate has served as.
The Curzon has its three screens in the other side of the building, but it means that the one interesting hall is yes not closed off to daylight or subdivided, but that all screens are small and dull block boxes.
I discovered that Curzon runs the Gulbenkian cinema at the University, meaning that there is no independent cinema here, and I don’t know of any in Kent. Picturehouses has a new strange dome at Ashford, land of the multiplex; Rochester acquired one by the millennium; Whistable’s popular cinema on the beach – used as the oyster bar in Tipping the Velvet – handed its reels so to speak to the mixed arts centre Horsefair; and I’m not sure if the old style Empire at Sandwich still runs. I can attest that Tonbridge seems to have no cinema and that Tunbridge Wells has only an out of town Odeon, having long lost its 30s central cinema.
Hence having two venues run by the same chain is significant, and it makes the Gulbenkian effectively just screen 4, like Picturehouses have at Brighton and attempted at Bath.
The concretey arts at UKC have a much larger screen, for all three in Westgate are under 100 seats, and with low ceilings and no character, it wasn’t a thrilling experience. The bar isn’t big – again, smaller than at the Gulbenkian – and it basically just a few seats in the box office area. They expect you to scan QR codes on the tables, even though you’re in calling distance of the counter, rather than tell you what’s there. Why should we have to get out or phones and use our resources to know what is in front of us? And let them know more about us. I see this as a backdoor way (now becoming popular, but it’s an excuse) to both harvest data and give less service. They hope we’ll book at home, and print own own tickets – but still charge an extra pound’s fee – for what?! Staff aren’t in the screens, and so there’s little interaction with us.
It felt quite an ordinary and disappointing experience, a prop to allow the hall next door to continue; and for another chain purporting to be arty, but actually showing some disappointingly mainstream fare, to gain footing in an otherwise potentially independent county, already fighting off London invasion as much as any we’ve ever had from the continent.
Street marshals, armed guards (another Murder At The Cathedral?) and the heavy security and suddenly closed roads around it, its stupidly high carparking charges, and the council’s attitudes mean that as much as Canterbury is as richly historic and charming as ever, that it is not tempting me to live in the foreseeable future.
Cinema with Elspeth 