A Majestic history

‘IT in fact opened on November 21 – the day I was born,” he said.

“My brother, Keith, who was three-and-ahalf years older than me, was taken away from the proceedings to go to the opening.”

Brian, of course, doesn’t remember the day in question.

“I became a regular visitor to the Odeon, and one of my aunties had a bread and cake shop above it, so I always got an iced bun before seeing a film,” he says.

When it opened, the cinema was known as the Majestic, and it had sister Majestic cinemas in Darlington and Hartlepool.

It was designed by Darlington architect Joshua Clayton, and seated 1,380 patrons.

“The style is modern, relying for effect upon good proportions rather than fussy ornamentation,” said The Northern Echo on opening day.

“The entrance hall is simple but effective. The walls and ceiling have been sprayed with plastic paint in warm tones of beige, relieved by a variety of bright tints and gold. Black ebonised woodwork, coloured terrazzo floor, rubber-covered staircases and cleverly concealed lighting are among the other attractive features.”

It featured the latest Western Electric mirrophonic sound equipment – “remarkable clarity and fidelity of tone”, and a ventilation system that introduced one million cubic feet of fresh air every hour, making the atmosphere inside “purer than outside”, despite the smoking cinema-goers.

The cinema was opened by the chairman of Bishop Auckland Urban District Council, H Leedale, and among the guests was the mayor of Darlington, John Dougill. He expressed sympathy to Councillor Leedale for the “disastrous fire” that West Auckland had just experienced.

The night before Brian Johnson was born, two new factories were severely damaged in a blaze, throwing 350 people out of work.

The Alligator Leather Company, which employed 250 girls and women making handbags, was destroyed, and Memories’ old favourite, Ernest and Henry, which employed 100 people making buttons, was badly burned.

Pieces from The Northern Echo on November 21, 1938 – the day the Majestic opened

The factories had been opened only a month earlier by Sir George Gillett, a London Quaker banker and Labour MP who was the Commissioner for the Special Areas.

“Special Areas” suffered very high rates of unemployment and so were eligible for grants to boost business. At the opening of the cinema, Coun Leedale was anxious to point out that the area might have been industrially depressed but that did not mean all its people were, too.

Both the leather and the button companies had been started by immigrants from the continent and had been paid incentives to relocate from London.

“Many of those who watched their jobs vanishing in flames and smoke were the key workers of both factories, most of them brought from London and living in lodgings until houses in St Helen’s are completed.”

The biggest talking point of the blaze was that it had been tackled by Crook Collieries Fire Brigade and Bishop Auckland’s volunteer brigade, several members of whom had been uncontactable. The blaze, said the Echo, again highlighted the need to form a full-time brigade covering all south Durham – but it would be expensive.

Both companies recovered after the fire, but neither of them lasted as long as the cinema.

In 1943, the Darlington businessmen behind the Majestic chain sold it to the Odeon organisation, headed by Joseph Arthur Rank, and the cinemas changed their names.

Bishop’s Odeon gained a second screen in 1973, but closed on October 15, 1983, when it was making a loss. The building became derelict and was demolished in April 1995 and a supermarket is now on its site.

The Odeon Cinema – formerly the Majestic – in Bishop Auckland in November 1959

MEMORIES 146 also contained a picture of the demolition Hardisty’s fruit and veg shop in Newgate Street, Bishop Auckland, in November 1971.

Several people pointed out that the shop was run by Jack Hardisty, father of the famous Bishop footballer, Bob.

The shop was in a building constructed in 1913 on the site of the Friends’ Meeting House.

The old stone tympanum from above the Quakers’ doorway had been built into the shop. It said the Quakers’ meeting house had been erected in 1665 and rebuilt in 1840. It all came down in 1971 to make way for the typically unimaginative 1970s bank.

“The picture brought some memories back for me,” says David Blair in Aycliffe. “After demolition, the site became the premises of the Halifax Building Society, which opened in 1973. I was one of the staff who first worked there.

“There were problems, however, with the car park at the rear, which had once been the Quaker burial ground.”

In fact, until the municipal cemetery opened in 1884, the Quakers had the only graveyard in Bishop town centre.

The demolition of the shops on the site of the Friends Meeting House

“We were told that bodies had been exhumed before the building society had been built, but the burials apparently extended under the back of the building,” says David.

“When we were locking up at night, we always used the back entrance.

“I have to say that it remained a peculiarly, cold and spooky place.

“There were never any volunteers to work late alone on dark winter evenings.”

THE same edition of Memories contained pictures of Bishop Auckland’s various Methodist chapels.

Both John Biggs and Colin Bennett got in touch to say that the picture captioned “Tenters Street Primitive Methodist Chapel” in fact showed a chapel that used to be in Etherley Dene. Documents lodged in the National Archives suggest this chapel functioned from 1870 until 1978, when it disappeared for the roadside housing development.

John also reports that what we called a chapel at Fylands Bridge was in fact St Luke’s Church, which was converted into a garage in the 1960s. John’s eye was taken by the vehicle outside the garage.

The car parked outside St Luke’s Church, Fylands Bridge, in December 1967

“It’s a Vauxhall Viva HA,” he says. “The first of the Vivas.”

MEMORIES 142 and 144 included some old class photos from Darlington’s Reid Street school in the early 1950s.

June Rudd was in one of the photos.

Reid Street was a secondary school, and June remembers there being a domestic science building where there was a little flat so children could learn how to make beds and do cookery.

“The first thing we did in needlework was a handkerchief,” she says. “We learned that there was a right and a wrong way to iron a ladies handkerchief.”

She also remembers there were old air raid shelters in the playground – “we weren’t allowed to go in them” – and, best of all, she remembers that the art teacher’s name was Miss Pitcher.

The Etherley Dene Methodist Chapel in July 1973