Riding School, Ramsden Street, Huddersfield

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This page is a bare-bones entry for a location which appears on an historic Ordnance Survey map. More detailed information may eventually be added...

Details

  • also known as: Zetland Riding School, Hippodrome Theatre, New Hippodrome and Opera House, Tudor House Super Cinema
  • appears on maps: 1851 [#456], 1890 [#37]
  • location: Ramsden Street (now on Queensgate), Huddersfield
  • status: still exists but now under a different use
  • architects:

Discovering Old Huddersfield

Extract from Discovering Old Huddersfield (1993-2002) by Gordon & Enid Minter:

Just after the grassy bank, on the other side of the ring road, notice the Zetland Hotel (now O'Neills) and the Tudor Cinema, both scheduled to be victims of the proposed Kingsgate development.

The cinema, which over the years has seen many changes, was originally built at a cost of £2,400 as a Riding School. It opened to the public on 21st February 1848 with a performance by Batty's Circus and thereafter various theatrical shows were staged there. The Riding School, however, had a dual role in that, until 1862, it was the headquarters of the 2nd. West Yorkshire Yeomanry Cavalry. In that year the building was sold to the 6th. West Yorkshire Rifle Volunteers who used it as an Armoury until they moved to the newly erected drill-hall in St. Paul's Street in 1901.

In 1902 the Armoury was bought by the Northern Theatre Company for £2,250 and three years later, after conversion into an up-to-date music hall, it was reopened as the Hippodrome by Miss Vesta Tilley, one of the foremost variety artistes of the times. Over the next twenty-five years most of the great stars of music-hall appeared at the Hippodrome which, after modernisation in 1926, was re-named the New Hippodrome and Opera House. The next great change came in 1930 when the Hippodrome became the Tudor House Super Cinema. The interior of the new cinema was appropriately decorated in Mock-Tudor style with lath and plaster 'timbering', and furnished with pseudo shields, tapestries and suits of armour. In the early years occasional theatrical shows were presented at the Tudor but the practice declined in the late 1930s. In recent decades the cinema has changed hands - and names - several times. Its days seemed to be numbered when it was closed by its owners, M.G.M., on 22nd February 1995 but fortunately, at the eleventh hour, a new proprietor came along who reopened it on the 23rd. and, happily, revived the old name. Although a fire destroyed part of the building in December 1967, much of the old fabric remains and, as Riding School, Armoury, Hippodrome, Tudor, Essoldo, Classic, Cannon and now as Tudor again it has offered entertainment to the people of Huddersfield for nearly a century and half. Moreover, it has the distinction of being the only one of thirty-three local cinemas to survive.

Gallery

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Location