About this Project

The following photos show our recent removal of equipment from the former Ritz Cinema, Sheerness. The cinema opened on 15 march 1937 as the Ritz and was Sheerness’s second ‘super’ cinema to be built by entrepreneur Lou Morris, by the late 30’s Lou Morris theatres owned all four Swale cinema’s the ARGOSY, HIPPODROME, RIO , and RITZ.

Lou Morris appointed popular Wally Brailsford (ex ‘Regal’ Bow) as General Manager of the 1245 seat cinema which ran successfully until the sale of many of the Morris Theatres to the ‘ESSOLDO’ chain, it may have been around this time that a refit would of seen the Kalee projectors installed, renamed again to ‘Classic’ in 1972 with falling attendances the building was split - and by 1978 only the 366 former balcony was in cinema use as ‘WOODYS’ . The cinema finally closed as ‘IMAGES’ on the 9th of November 1985.

In March we contacted Lancebox Demolition, who had already moved in to start the internal clearance of the site, very little fixtures and fittings were left and the ‘stage-house’ and circle ‘drop-wall’ had already gone flooding the now black auditorium with light and expanding the cinema to one huge space once more.

The projection room had not aged well and at least two of the rooms on the top floor were knee-deep in pigeon waste due to many broken windows, however the projector mechs were in reasonable order and turned freely, the rare ‘elephants foot’ bases are extremely heavy and it was only due to the bare concrete floors that we managed to drag them down the stairs on ski’s.

The projectors were re-fitted with unusual Auto-Arc lamphouse’s rather than standard Kalee ‘Lightmaster’ or ‘President’ arcs, the Autoarc’s probably date to the 1960’s when ‘Essoldo’ and founder Sol Sheckman ran a tight ship, much projection equipment was often cobbled together from venue to venue and nothing went to waste by order of the management..

Much of the aluminium casting on the Kalee’s had oxidised causing a lot of paint flaking so the much of the units are to be re-sprayed with perfect colour-match from a sample scan, as you can see the base of the has been started and the finish is looking good.

The removal of this installation was carried out by:

Alex Cooper

Peter Bennett of Bennett-Orwell Group

Gavin Cooper

Adam Pearson