John Orbell
Continuous Performance
A History of Cinema in Bury St Edmunds
A detailed account of how a small English market town embraced the new medium of film – and was transformed by it. From makeshift screenings in fairground tents and club halls to the grandeur of the Odeon in 1937 and the revival of cinemagoing in the twenty-first century, this narrative reveals a century of cultural change, technological innovation and human stories. Drawing on extensive newspaper archives and rare local sources, John Orbell uncovers the entrepreneurs, projectionists, impresarios and audiences who shaped Bury’s cinematic life, tracing an extraordinary journey from bioscopes and silent pictures to wartime crowds, architectural triumphs, closures and near-extinction. With an epilogue by Pat Church, former cinema manager in Bury.
- Format
- Paperback, also in hardback
- Pages
- 112
- Illustrations
- 136 colour and black & white
- Includes
- Index
- Trim size
- 210 × 280 mm
- ISBN
- 978-0956611178 (paperback)
978-0956611185 (hardback) - Hardback
- Case-bound with a dust jacket and a ribbon marker. The text pages are identical to the paperback; only the endpapers differ, with their own design in place of the paperback’s inside covers. Case approx. 220 × 290 mm.
- Published
- 2026, Tailor’s End Press
Contents
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- Map of Cinema Sites before 1985
- Preface
- The Beginning
- The Constitutional Club
- The First Cinemas Open
- The Empire Picture Palace
- The Bury Electric Theatre
- Bury St Edmunds Picture Palace
- The End of the Bury Electric Theatre
- The New Empire Leads the Way
- The Gem
- The New Empire
- The Rink Picture Palace
- Mr Bates at the Athenaeum
- The Impact of War
- The Modern Cinema
- The End of the New Empire
- The Central Cinema
- The Playhouse
- Consolidation
- The Central and Playhouse at Work
- The Talkies
- Persons Worth Knowing
- The Odeon Arrives
- On Wartime Service
- The End of the Beginning
- Survival Against the Odds
- Renaissance
- Epilogue
- Dramatis Personae
- Endnotes
- Chronology
- Further Reading
- Appendices
- 1. Cost Analysis, Bates’ Electric Pictures, 1908
- 2. Profits, Losses, etc., Bates’ Electric Pictures, 1908
- 3. Central Cinema Shareholders
- 4. Cinema Admissions
- 5. The Rise and Fall of the Bostock Circuit
- 6. Suffolk Cinema Seating Capacity
- 7. Suffolk Cinema Seat Prices
- 8. Bury Cinema Seat Prices
- Index
- Notes on the Design
Where to buy
UK postage included. Overseas postage on application.
Look inside
Sample pages from Continuous Performance. Select a page to enlarge it.
