Arts, Cinema and Theatre

Crawley Arts Council

Crawley Arts Council was founded in 1971 to advance, stimulate, encourage and promote the knowledge, appreciation and practice of and education in the arts in the town and its locality. It runs the Crawley Blue Plaque Scheme and Heritage Trail.


The Tin Hut and Victoria Picture Theatre

Before 1911 films were shown at "The Tin Hut" in East Park, but business declined after the opening of The Imperial Picture Theatre. Films were also shown until about 1914 at the Victoria Picture Theatre in the High Street.

Cinema West Sussex: The First Hundred Years. Allen Eyles, Frank Gray, Alan Readman (Phillimore 1996)

Imperial Picture Theatre

The Imperial Picture Theatre, built by Charles Gadsdon in 1911 on the Brighton Road, showed silent films as well as staging live entertainment and public meetings. It was burnt down on Saturday 4th August 1928.

Cinema West Sussex: The First Hundred Years. Allen Eyles, Frank Gray, Alan Readman (Phillimore 1996)

Imperial Cinema

The Imperial Cinema was rebuilt by Charles Gadsdon on the site of the old Imperial, and opened on Saturday 20th July 1928. It was equipped to show the new "talking pictures". It was refurbished in 1937, but closed in April 1939 unable to compete with the new Embassy Cinema. It became an auction room, and then a car showroom for Gadsdons in 1986.

Cinema West Sussex: The First Hundred Years. Allen Eyles, Frank Gray, Alan Readman (Phillimore 1996)

Embassy CinemaLocally Listed

Shipman & King built their new Embassy Cinema on the site of the Albany Temperance Hotel. Designed by the cinema architect Robert Cromie in a restrained classical style with Art Deco detailing, it opened on Monday 1st August 1938. The cinema closed in December 1979 and re-opened on 20th March 1980 as a three-cinema complex. With the opening of the Virgin multiplex the Embassy finally closed in January 2000. It became the Bar Med nightclub in May 2000 until final closure on 28th August 2012 and demolition in December 2012 to make way for redevelopment.

Cinema West Sussex: The First Hundred Years. Allen Eyles, Frank Gray, Alan Readman (Phillimore 1996)

Films

In the 1920s and 1930s Moses Nightingale produced films of local events. The Crawley Film Unit was the film production section of the Crawley Film Society. They mostly produced fiction films between 1954 and 1963. Crawley Cine Club, later known as Crawley Film Makers, also produced films between 1968 and 1983.

Crawley Station and High Street were used for scenes in the Norman Wisdom Film One Good Turn, which was released in 1954. Crawley also features in The Undesirable Neighbour - one of the films in the Scales of Justice series - released in 1963, and later shown on television. Another episode, Infamous Conduct (1966), has a short sequence filmed at Gatwick Airport. Episode five in the first series (1984) of the sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles, featuring Richard Briers and Penelope WIlton, was filmed in The Broadway, Crawley Town centre.

Cinema West Sussex: The First Hundred Years. Allen Eyles, Frank Gray, Alan Readman (Phillimore 1996)

The Hawth

A proposal for a theatre behind the Town Hall was rejected by the council in 1964, and subsequent schemes were rejected until plans were approved for a site at the Hawth in 1986. The arts centre cost £6.7 million to build, and opened on 30th April 1988.