Glenroyal Cinema Briggate Shipley Yorkshire

Built for A. S Hyde and Clifford Cawthorne's Shipley Picture House Company, the Glenroyal was Shipley's only 'super' cinema with many advanced features. 1166 seats, stage with 30 feet proscenium. It stood in a prime position in Briggate and only a few yards away from the old and now defunct Shipley Picture House. Built at a cost of £25,000, it was the idea of Shack Hyde and was to become the flagship of his A S Hyde Circuit.The site of the new Theatre adjacent to the Leeds-Liverpool Canal presented many difficulties to be overcome by the general contractor Harry Chippindale who was then building houses off West Lane in Baildon. Over seventy percent of the work done by local labour and materials supplied by local tradesmen.  The front facade, 130 feet long with a wrought iron and glass canopy the full length housed five lock-up shops and a sweets/tobacco shop to the right of the cinema entrance with access both outside from Briggate and from within the cinema foyer. It was of rustic brick and cream faience tiling as illuminated with floodlighting  .....“The entrance hall had gold plastic walls and a mother-of-pearl dome ceiling; magnificent Spanish mahogany doors which gave a hint of the beauty to follow within... The wide central stairway led directly to the balcony foyer magnificently carpeted with thick Wilton carpet specially woven by Firth’s of Brighouse for the Glenroyal and having been supplied and fitted by Alfred Linley & Sons of Windhill... The illuminated red-and-black Buddha statue on the staircase was bought at an auction by [the owner] Shack Hyde, who found it attractive and adopted it as a mascot. It seems that more Buddhas appeared at other cinemas in his expanding circuit – some were on public display and others were in offices. As this was 1932 and ‘talkies’ were now well-established, the Glenroyal was fitted with the American-designed Western Electric Sound System from the outset.

Councillor Clifford Cawthorne, the retiring Chairman of Shipley Urban District Council and a director of the new cinema company laid the foundation stone in March 1932. The opening on Monday 5th September 1932 at 2.30pm was by Councillor Gordon Waddilove, JP, the new incoming Chairman of Shipley Urban District Council,