Penistone Paramount Cinema
Encyclopedia
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
and theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
in Penistone
Penistone
Penistone is a small town market town and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley, in South Yorkshire, England, with a population of 10,101 at the 2001 census. It lies west of the town of Barnsley and north east of Glossop, in the foothills of the Pennines...
, near Barnsley
Barnsley
Barnsley is a town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Dearne, north of the city of Sheffield, south of Leeds and west of Doncaster. Barnsley is surrounded by several smaller settlements which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley, of which Barnsley is the largest and...
, in the heart of the South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It has a population of 1.29 million. It consists of four metropolitan boroughs: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and City of Sheffield...
Pennines
Pennines
The Pennines are a low-rising mountain range, separating the North West of England from Yorkshire and the North East.Often described as the "backbone of England", they form a more-or-less continuous range stretching from the Peak District in Derbyshire, around the northern and eastern edges of...
. Besides the big film releases, there are live shows and monthly organ concerts.
The cinema is also home to one of the few working theatre organs in the country. The Paramount Compton Organ
Theatre organ
A theatre organ is a pipe organ originally designed specifically for imitation of an orchestra. New designs have tended to be around some of the sounds and blends unique to the instrument itself....
has been recently rebuilt, and was the reason why the cinema was renamed from the Metro Cinema.
The Compton Organ was built in 1937 by the John Compton Organ Company in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, especially for the Paramount Theatre in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
.
The organ was removed from there in 1988 when the cinema was refurbished and made into a multiplex. It was then moved to the Regal in Oswestry
Oswestry
Oswestry is a town and civil parish in Shropshire, England, close to the Welsh border. It is at the junction of the A5, A483, and A495 roads....
, where it stayed until the cinema closed in 1994.
In 2000 The Penistone Cinema Organ Trust purchased the organ, and all of the 1000 pipes were cleaned out as part of the organ restoration. The trust then made an agreement with the council for the organ to be based there. The cinema was then renamed as the Paramount in honour of the new resident.
The building itself remains the property of Barnsley Metropolitan District Council, and is leased back to Penistone Town Council to keep it open as a cinema. The cinema was featured on the BBC Politics Show as an example of how a small provincial community cinema can survive.
External links
- Penistone Paramount Cinema website
- http://www.cinema-organs.org.uk
