A now disappeared cinema in Thornaby. Who remembers it?
Image courtesy of Anon.
Thornaby Cinema
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A now disappeared cinema in Thornaby. Who remembers it?
Image courtesy of Anon.
Picture Stockton Archive 
Hello, my sister Corol Shepherd owned the sweet shop next to the Mayfair bingo hall in about 1987 till 1992. The shop was called the Mayfair Chocolate Box. I am Carols brother Fred Hurley and I worked in the shop till Carol gave the shop up in 1992. I / we built the shop up selling sweets, crisps, drinks, snacks and sandwiches. In the school holidays and Saturdays and Sundays the shop was busy with kids coming from the baths on Thornaby Road. The baths cottoned on to how the kids were coming to our shop for sweets, so the baths opened a sweet shop within the baths. On the other side of the bingo hall (facing Thornaby Road) was Swinton Insurance office. I believe the old Swinton Insurance office is now a youth centre.
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Hi Fred did you have another sister called Alex Shepherd and did Carol live in I’m not sure Cambridge road or St Paul’s Road into Thornaby and attended Queen Street and the Arthur Head Schools.
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My grandmother spires worked in the chocolate shop until it was closed
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The Sweet shop was called the Mayfair Chocolate Box, It was the only place I ever remember seeing one of those very large boxes of Cadburys chocolates with the picture on the front of the box, which I think was in the 80’s
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I went there once
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My Mam, took me (I was about 10 yrs old) to see the Film ‘Edge of the City’, Starring Sidney Poitier & John Cassavetes. in 1957/8. A film akin to ‘On the Waterfront’ which starred Marlon Brando.
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Went there with my girlfriend in 1953.
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Many present and former residents of Thornaby will remember this as the Mayfair Cinema situated on the corner of Thornaby Road and Lanehouse Road opposite Thornaby Baths. Designed by Archibald and Archibald of Middlesbrough and built in 1938 it was used solely as a cinema until 1960. Between 1960 and 1962 it was used both as a cinema and bingo hall after which it closed as a cinema and was a bingo hall until final closing (I believe) in 1996. I recall two kiosk units integral with the front of the main building – one was a sweet shop and the other possibly an insurance office?. As a resident of Middlesbrough I remember it for a different reason. In the early 1960s I was a young trainee Chartered Surveyor with the firm who were instructed to put it on the market for sale. My part in this was to measure up the building and prepare scale drawings for inclusion in the sale particulars. Not an easy task for as a result of the way it was positioned on this corner site there was hardly a right angle to be found….
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This used to be called the Mayfair Cinema. Saturday afternoon matinee was a favourite for us as school kids – long before the days of TV when Tarzan, Roy Rogers and other stars of the day held their audiences in suspended animation for nearly 3 hours for a bob.
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Yes it’s the Mayfair cinema one of three in Thornaby it was on the corner of Lanehouse Road and Thornaby Road I lived less than a minute away from the cinema on Lanehouse Road and used it a lot on the children’s Saturday morning matinées we also did well outside the cinema with penny for the Guy in the middle fifties and early sixties good days
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Omg was this called the Mayfair was there a sweet shop next door if so I remember it I went there with my sister and her friend when I was little.
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