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Seaton Park Racecourse, 1928
259 This image shows one of the last races in Seaton Park at a meeting held on Saturday 22nd and Monday 24th September 1928.
Horse racing had taken place in the city regularly in the 19th century when there was a racecourse at the Links. Its popularity had declined but racing was revived in Seaton Park in 1923 when 30,000 people attended.
The 1928 Meeting was not a great success since less than 1000 spectators attended on the Saturday, although 3000 attended on the Monday despite intermittent rain. The entrance fee to the ground was 1/6 (seven and a half pence) and to the Paddock 4 shillings (20p) with licensed bars, refreshments and teas available.
The fields were not large with only 5 runners in the main events. The Bon Accord Handicap, run over 7 furlongs, had prize money of 25 sovereigns. The last race on the Monday was the Consolation Handicap (for beaten horses). Only 3 horses ran, with "Lolita" winning by 6 lengths. The third horse "Peggy Maitland" was so far behind that her owner/jockey had to walk her past the post.
An application made in 1956 to restart horse racing was turned down by the Town Council. Aberdeen Theatres: Aberdeen Arts Centre
3386 In 1960 the education committee of Aberdeen Town Council proposed the conversion of the empty North and Trinity Parish Church into an adult education and civic arts centre. The plan was given final approval in February 1961, much to the delight of Aberdeen's art enthusiasts.
The Evening Express detailed the need for such a venue at the time by describing the difficulties faced by the William Gavin Players, a local drama group, in staging a play earlier that week in the ballroom of the Music Hall. They had to overcome the roar of a nearby wrestling audience, the incessant ringing of an unanswered telephone, a cramped stage and poor acoustics.
A temporary restriction on capital expenditure and a particularly severe winter caused delays for the conversion. Work began in late 1961 and was concluded by the autumn of 1963. The work cost around £33,000 and saw the reconstruction of the interior and a thorough re-vamp for the building's exterior. At one point the new centre was going to be called Longacre, but this idea was scrapped in favour of Aberdeen Arts Centre.
The completed venue was opened on 18th October 1963 by Sir Herbert Read (1893-1968), an art critic, poet and anarchist philosopher. In his speech Read criticised the main political parties of the day for neglecting the development of the arts and the human imagination in favour of a blind drive for scientific and technological efficiency.
In addition to the 385-seat auditorium, the venue had an exhibition space, a lounge, and a tea bar. The Arts Centre has remained the focal point for local arts groups and arts education to this day. It has also served as a meeting place and provided a useful stage for theatrical productions of all types.
In 1998, facing the need to cut £17.5 million from their budget, Aberdeen City Council withdrew their funding from the Arts Centre. This left the future of the venue in danger. A popular campaign to avoid its closure was led by Annie Inglis MBE (1922-2010), Aberdeen's first lady of theatre.
This led to the Aberdeen Arts Centre Association taking over the venue on a voluntary basis and the eventual formation of the Castlegate Arts Limited, a company with charitable status who continue to run the venue today.
Over the years the Arts Centre has played host to many noted local theatre groups like the Attic Theatre Co., The Revue Group, the aforementioned William Gavin Players, Phoenix Theatre, the Gilbert & Sullivan Society, Aberdeen Opera Company, Confederate Theatre, Dragongate Theatre, and no doubt many more. It remains a much-loved venue for performers and audiences of all ages. Aberdeen Cinemas: Electric / Capitol
3402 A photograph showing the Capitol façade in January 2021.
By the 1960s and 70s the Capitol was increasingly being used as a venue for live events. Michael Thomson credits its survival over the Majestic, closed down in September 1973, as due to the Capitol's superior stage facilities. The Donald family, the venue owners, had the stage enlarged in 1975.
Appearances by popular groups like the Bay City Rollers in 1974 suggested the future for the venue at the time. The Capitol also saw performances by the Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison, Queen, Boyzone and Chuck Berry among many others. The Capitol ceased showing films in 1995.
The Capitol contained a restaurant, and subsequently bar, in the cinema's former café area around this period. 1993 saw the opening of the Art Deco and cinema themed bar Oscars in this space.
The Capitol functioned as a wonderful venue giving North-East audiences the chance to see top performers for many years. It became increasingly uneconomic to run and the curtain finally came down on the venue on Monday 15th December 1997.
The building was later converted into a nightclub and restaurant called Jumping Jaks and the Chicago Rock Café that opened in around 2003. These closed down in 2008 and the Capitol laid empty for some time.
In 2013 Knight Property Group began plans to redevelop the site as a modern office complex. The £30m project retained and restored the cinema's original façade and employed an Art Deco style in its foyer entrance to reference the history of the building. The venue's auditorium that had been much altered and had fallen into disrepair was demolished. The launch of the new office complex was held on 10th June 2016. Aberdeen Cinemas: Picturedrome / Cinema House
3411 The Cinema House was located at the corner of Union Terrace, Skene Terrace and North Silver Street. The building was designed by Arthur H. L. Mackinnon and originally built in 1897-1898 as a clubhouse for the Aberdeen Union Club. Mackinnon (1870-1937) was a local architect who also designed the Aberdeen Fire Station on King Street and Mile End School.
The building's first recorded use for cinematographic purposes was a New Year Holiday Carnival organised by the pioneering Aberdeen cinematographer and exhibitor William Walker in December 1901. Alongside an early picture show the extravaganza featured the popular fiddler James Scott Skinner and a conjurer called Harry Marvello.
It was a Londoner by the name of Henry N. Philips who came to Aberdeen and in June 1910 converted this building into Aberdeen's second permanent cinema: the Picturedrome. The enterprise was a great success and Philip's formed a company called British Animated Pictures to run the cinema.
The 'Drome's first manager was Harry Fenton. He also appeared on the cinema's stage as a singer. This was a time when cinemas would often show a mixture of films and variety performances. The venue had a pianist called Hal Scott who would accompany performances and provided musical ambience.
The Picturedrome was noted for showing the film productions of Thomas Edison's Edison Studios and for consistently good stage turns.
In 1923 the Picturedrome/Union Club block was sold to the Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds. They were one of the 19th century friendly societies in which people would band together prior to the development of more comprehensive welfare provision. The Shepherds continued to run the cinema for a period. A sign for the society can be seen in the top left of this image.
In May 1924 the cinema was taken over by James F. Donald. He was the patriarch of the Donald family that played a prominent role in the history of cinemas and theatres in Aberdeen. Restored and improved, the venue reopened on the 11th August of that year as the Cinema House. Donald initially held the premises on a 20-year lease, but would go on to buy the property outright.
This photograph, taken from in front of the Central Library, dates from around 1934 and shows the cinema advertising Father Brown Detective and The Lemon Drop Kid. Also visible next door at 2 Skene Terrace is a branch of the successful grocer and provision merchants, Wilburn Ltd.
[Information primarily sourced from Silver Screen in the Silver City (1988) by Michael Thomson] Aberdeen Cinemas: Coliseum / New Kinema / Belmont
3433 An Aberdeen Journals Archive image of the Belmont Cinema in 1952.
The building that now houses the Belmont Filmhouse was originally built in 1896 as a Trades Hall to a design by architects Alexander Ellis and Robert Gordon Wilson.
The grey granite ashlar entrance at 49-51 Belmont Street leads to the main building, best seen from Union Terrace and Rosemount Viaduct. With multiple floors, the building makes full use of the different levels of the Denburn valley. Historic Environmental Scotland's statement of special interest for the building notes its tall and narrow design and bartizan towers at its far end, describing it as "a distinctive piece of architecture."
Michael Thomson explains that the Trades Hall provided much needed accommodation for meetings, social events and lectures. The main hall originally featured ceiling paintings by Robert Douglas Strachan (1875-1950), who went on to become an acclaimed stained-glass artist.
The construction of the hall was an ambitious and costly undertaking for Aberdeen's labour movement. This led to the hall being increasingly rented out for commercial performances, including cinematographic showings.
William Walker, a local cinematographic pioneer who was also a successful bookseller, leased out the building's main hall as a picture house. The Coliseum was opened on 22 August 1910 by Messrs Walker and Company and so began the building's long life as a cinema.
In July 1911 Glasgow's J. J. Bennell took over control of the Coliseum. Popular features of the venue during Walker and Bennell's time included short "topicals" that documented local life and live variety acts. Thomson explains that Bennell was also a pioneer of Saturday morning matinees for children.
In August 1913 Dove Paterson, another local pioneer who had opened Aberdeen's first permanent cinema on Shiprow, took over at the Coliseum. Paterson died unexpectedly in May 1916 and this brought a temporary halt to the Coliseum cinema. It briefly reopened in December of that year under the management of the Trades Hall, but this only lasted a couple of months before the cinema closed again.
The cinema was then managed by veteran singer D. Brown McGill, who made use of his established contacts in variety circles. His tenure saw the venue complementing its programme of film showings with a range of other entertainments including roller skating, boxing and dancing.
On 11th April 1921 the cinema reopened as the New Kinema, under the management of Henry Philips, who had previously run the Picturedrome on Skene Terrace. One interesting performer at the venue in 1929 noted by Michael Thomson was an illusionist called Carletta who conjured up rabbits to give away to patrons as pets.
In 1935 the then proprietors of the New Kinema, James Brebner and George Walker, were involved in the formation of the Caledonian Theatre public company. It was formed to purchase the site of the La Scala cinema and nearby buildings on Union Street with the intention of building a new super-cinema. In time this would become the Majestic.
June 1935 saw the renovation of the New Kinema and renewal of its heating plant, lighting and sound equipment. It reopened as The Belmont on the 24th of that month.
[Information primarily sourced from Silver Screen in the Silver City (1988) by Michael Thomson]
Image © Aberdeen Journals Ltd. |