Stonehouse

The story of the first Regal cinema in Stonehouse begins in Uplands Stroud. J M Croome had built an iron
church of All Saints around 1900. This was replaced by the present stone church by 1910. Having no
further use for the old building it was acquired by the parish of Stonehouse as a church hall. The building
was dismantled, transported to Stonehouse and erected on Laburnum Walk, complete with wooden bell
tower topped by a steeple.

This building was converted into the Regal cinema in 1933 by the addition of a wooden structure to the front
of the building enclosing a foyer and above this the projection box. The cinema was run by A F Stratford with
300 seats British Thomson Houston sound and had a proscenium width of 16ft. Disaster struck the building
on 18th September 1936 when the building was devastated by fire.

It was not until 1939 that the replacement Regal cinema was opened by A F Stratford in Gloucester Road.
An inpressive art-deco cinema, above the entrance and canopy was a brick facade with a wide central stone
or concrete strip meeting a horizontal cap. To either side of this wall were lower brick elevations on top of
which were the words REGAL and CINEMA the concrete lettering allowing daylight through the letters and
themselves caped by concrete strip.

The new cinema had British Thomson Houston sound and capacity of 450 seats. The proscenium was 18ft
wide. Improvements in the early 1950s to allow for widescreen increased the proscenium to 22ft while
reducing the seating to 412. The screen was 18ft by 10ft 6inches. Always ran by A F Stratford the cinema
closed around 1960. The building was demolished in the 1980s and the site is now a garage.