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Report - - The Granada Cinema (aka Rialto) - Enfield - 21/8/09 | Theatres and Cinemas | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - The Granada Cinema (aka Rialto) - Enfield - 21/8/09

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To say im pissed off is an understatement, do you ever get those weeks when nothing will go right! well i appear to be having a month or two of it! Here i am with a mountain of cool old buildings to go visit and yet again i have no wide angle lense! Firstly the loyal, vetran 10-20 gets confiscated by over egar pold and after waiting 3 weeks to get it back they havnt even bothered to serve the paperwork let alone get it back to me! So.. i go to the local jessops and blow £370 on a nice new Tamron just to tide me over! 'Its an upgrade' i tell myself and after all ive got alot of epic places to visit and theres not alot of point if im not going to be able to photograph them properly!
All happy again i head off down to London to check out promising cinema number one, the Enfield Granada! I get in and am plesently surprised, what should have been a boring bingo conversion turns out to be one of the nicest little theaters ive seen, yes its stripped but the building itself is nice enough to make it an interesting explore!
I leave happy, for once something has gone fairly right! Then as if by magic my luck returns, i get the camera back out and plop it on the tripod for an exterior shot, take 3 steps, fall dow an open manhole hidden in the darkness and my nice new 'savior of the month' 10-24 lense hits the deck, snaps into two and roll off down the slope! Bum! To top it off i get home after a nice weekend mining and find ive taken all the shots in iso1600 fail mode and they are all wank!!

Il save you the bore of listing the rest of this months failures and just get one with it shall i!

The Rialto Cinema opened on 8th November 1920 (architect unknown) and was a project of Denman (London) Cinemas which were merged with Gaumont Theatres. However the Rialto was leased to Sydney Bernstein from May 1925 and improvements were made to the building by architect Cecil Masey and interior designer Theodore Komisarjevsky.

There were two entrances, the main one in Burleigh Way (a very narrow street off Church Street) served the balcony and best seats in the rear stalls. An ornate entrance facing the Market Place gave entry to the cheaper seats in the front stalls. Seating was provided for 939 in the stalls and 355 in the balcony. Initially the Rialto was equipped with a 'straight' Jones 2Manual organ. This was replaced by a Christie 2Manual/7Rank theatre organ in 1927 opened by Francis Soames. In 1935 this was re-built into a Christie 3Manual/9Rank theatre organ which was opened by Harold Ramsey.

It was fully acquired by Sydney Bernstein's Granada Theatre's Ltd chain in April 1965 and was re-named Granada from 21st July 1967. The Granada closed on 17th July 1971 with Burt Lancaster in "Valdez Is Coming" and Michael Crawford in "The Jokers".

The building was converted into a Granada Bingo Club, in later years being operated by Gala Bingo. It closed as a Gala Bingo Club in 1997 and the building has remained closed, shuttered and deteriorating ever since.

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boo life! :banghead
 
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