Memories of the Odeon Cinema

2:22pm Thursday 31st January 2008

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Looking through your paper last week I was excited to see an article about the old Odeon cinema in Preston city centre.

I used to visit this cinema often when I was younger during the eighties and early nineties and have wondered for many years what the inside of it now looked like.

Click the link below to view photos of the Odeon Cinema, past and present, courtesy of reader James Crompton

I have searched around on the internet but only found one or two pictures of the outside of the cinema at various points in its life however I have never managed to actually see inside.

From what I can remember there were two screens with Odeon 1, as it was called, being the biggest cinema auditorium I have ever visited. Odeon 2 was much smaller and located to the right of the main auditorium before you went through the doors into Odeon 1.

On weekend evenings we would queu up down the side of the cinema waiting to see the latest films. A couple of years ago I left the nightclub next door and some workmen had opened the doors at the front of the cinema and they were kind enough to let me and a friend have a quick look in the entrance with the ticket office on the left and the cinema shop on the right.

Since then I've been trying to find photographs of the inside of the cinema either while it was in use or as it is now.

Your photograph of the smaller auditorium brought back a few memories but I am interested to know of any more photographs. I also think reopening the cinema in time for the Preston Guild is a wonderful idea as Preston city centre is short of a cinema and showing alternative films would also be a great idea and so I wish James good luck in his project in the future.

David Freeman Via email