Former Headington Cinema, New High Street
Photograph: © Graham Paul Smith
A “picture palace” was first proposed for Headington as early as 1914, and an architect's drawing for the “Headington Kinema Theatre” for Mr H. Froude, designed by A. W. Gardiner of St Aldate's, appeared in the Oxford Journal Illustrated on 25 February 1914. This would have stood on the north side of the London Road near Osler Road, but never came to fruition: see photograph with X marking the proposed location.
In 1918 Edwin James Hall moved into Clifton House at 90 London Road. This detached villa is shown left prior to demolition in 1991. It had a large L-shaped garden with a back entrance on New High Street.
At the time of the 1921 census Hall still ran a tobacco shop at 41 Cornmarket Street.
Hall converted his own villa into three shops (left, just prior to demolition in 1991), and then bought the three adjoining London Road shops known as Belle Vue Terrace.
He then used the south end of the gardens of these six shops to build a cinema facing on to New High Street.
The 1921 map (below left) shows the large L-shaped garden of Clifton House swinging left into New High Street, and the three shops of Belle View Terrace in two plots immediately to the west. The 1939 map (below right) shows how the cinema was slotted into those four gardens.
1921
1939
Above: This detail from a postcard shows Headington Cinema (then called New Cinema) at the top of New High Street (which was then still the high street of New Headington village). The poster near the entrance shows that a film with John Gilbert called The Show was on the bill: this silent film was released in 1927 and the hairdresser & tobacconist called J. W. Bowen whose name is over the shop next door moved out in 1929, so the image can be dated as c.1928.
The whole postcard and more about the adjoining shops can be seen in the old postcards section of this website.
(The cinema and adjoining buildings looked remarkably similar thirty years later in 1957.)
The New Cinema was officially opened in New High Street on Monday 8 October 1923 at 5.40pm, and the programme for the first three days (all silent, of course), lasted 3½ hours. It comprised a new main film (Dr Mabuse the Gambler), supported by a feature (Lilac Sunbonnet), a documentary (Across the World), and the first instalment of a serial called Nick Carter.
A photograph of the New Cinema appeared in the Oxford Journal Illustrated of 10 October 1923.
In the 1930s the fish & chip shop at 1A New High Street, used to store bicycles for people who went to the cinema.
Right: Advertisement for Headington Cinema in the Oxford Monthly for 1935. By this time its name was simply “Headington Cinema”
The name “Headington Cinema” survived until 1960.
Edwin James Hall died in 1960 and his son Edward leased the cinema to Unifilms of London, who renamed it the “Moulin Rouge”, but failed to get planning permission for an illuminated windmill sign with revolving lights.
The cinema closed in 1977 because of rising costs and lack of support, and there were only nine people in the 500-seat auditorium for its last performance.
Bill Heine resurrected it as a cinema club in 1980, despite the fact that he had no licence, and in November 1981 adorned it with an enormous pair of can-can legs, sculpted by John Buckley (who was later to create the Headington Shark). Bill outwitted the planners with his usual chutzpah by renaming the cinema “Not the Moulin Rouge”, claiming that the legs could not be an advertisement for something that by its very name emphatically denied any connection with any dancing girls.
- Film of the can-can legs being attached to the cinema in 1990
- Photograph of Bill Heine with the legs in 1994
This cinema came under the aegis of Bill’s Penultimate Picture Company, which also ran the Penultimate Picture Palace (now renamed the Ultimate Picture Palace) in Jeune Street, Oxford and the Duke of York’s Cinema in Brighton.
The buildings on the whole site that belonged to the Hall family (the old shops at 80–94 London Road, and 1–1C New High Street, including Headington cinema) were demolished in 1991 to make way for the present row of shops on the London Road and the flats at Standon Court on New High Street. The legs were transferred from [Not the] Moulin Rouge to the roof of Bill Heine's Brighton cinema, and are still there. The Penultimate Picture Palace Company collapsed in 1994.
The photographs below were taken inside the cinema on the day in 1991 that the demolition team arrived.
The photograph below shows the new flats (Standon Court) that were built on the cinema site in the late 1990s.
Cinema Treasures: Not the Moulin Rouge
