The Aylesbury Odeon was among the first locations I ever explored, it was way back nearly eight years ago now that I first stepped foot in here. At the time of that visit access was easy, if a little public, but the only camera at my disposal was an already three year old point-and-shoot dealy which really wasn't suited to the job in hand. As such my photos from here sucked massive donkey balls and I never thought I'd get a chance to re-shoot the place.
However news of impending demolition surfaced in the summer of 2015, and better news came from Landie Man who told me he'd given it another look and found a possible way in. A visit was organised with the aim being to be over the fence at some silly time in the morning because of how public it was. Sadly none of our planning took into account the times of the Sainsbury's delivery lorries arriving in the loading bay adjacent to the car park where the fence was, and the level of activity this would entail. So after waiting it out for about an hour or so, and just as dawn was beginning to break, we decided it was now or never. Over the fence we vaulted using the same spot we'd used in 2010 and both of us dropped pretty much straight into a tree on the other side. During the years we'd been away, the alley at the side of the cinema had become a jungle that looked impenetrable at first, but after resorting to literally crawling on our hands and knees the length of the outside of the cinema we found the way in exactly how Landie Man had described.
We spent the time poking around - like many old cinemas it had been tripled at one point but the original auditorium was still fully intact behind the newer screens. We also knew that after a fire in one of the seating areas in 2010, which resulted in it getting thoroughly sealed up, they had installed an alarm somewhere in the lobby but neither of us knew where.
Thankfully because it had been locked up for so long, the cinema was largely in exactly the same condition I remembered it being in way back in 2010 - that is, quite badly tagged but all the tags were from 2007ish, nothing newer than that! The only bad thing was that before it was fully sealed up someone had removed the large ODEON letters from where they had been stored in a room above the foyer, which was a shame but I knew that beforehand.
I'm very glad I got to re-shoot this one, as it was demolished at the beginning of 2017.
Thanks for looking
However news of impending demolition surfaced in the summer of 2015, and better news came from Landie Man who told me he'd given it another look and found a possible way in. A visit was organised with the aim being to be over the fence at some silly time in the morning because of how public it was. Sadly none of our planning took into account the times of the Sainsbury's delivery lorries arriving in the loading bay adjacent to the car park where the fence was, and the level of activity this would entail. So after waiting it out for about an hour or so, and just as dawn was beginning to break, we decided it was now or never. Over the fence we vaulted using the same spot we'd used in 2010 and both of us dropped pretty much straight into a tree on the other side. During the years we'd been away, the alley at the side of the cinema had become a jungle that looked impenetrable at first, but after resorting to literally crawling on our hands and knees the length of the outside of the cinema we found the way in exactly how Landie Man had described.
We spent the time poking around - like many old cinemas it had been tripled at one point but the original auditorium was still fully intact behind the newer screens. We also knew that after a fire in one of the seating areas in 2010, which resulted in it getting thoroughly sealed up, they had installed an alarm somewhere in the lobby but neither of us knew where.
Thankfully because it had been locked up for so long, the cinema was largely in exactly the same condition I remembered it being in way back in 2010 - that is, quite badly tagged but all the tags were from 2007ish, nothing newer than that! The only bad thing was that before it was fully sealed up someone had removed the large ODEON letters from where they had been stored in a room above the foyer, which was a shame but I knew that beforehand.
I'm very glad I got to re-shoot this one, as it was demolished at the beginning of 2017.
Thanks for looking
