MANY readers will recognise this building which is ready for its latest incarnation.

This week we are taking a look in our archives to a building that has been a theatre and a cinema in its 100 year plus history.

Younger audiences will recognise this building on Academy Way as Trilogy nightclub and now Truth as it is ready for a new owner.

But older readers will remember it as the Hippodrome, as it was in this picture.

Warrington Guardian:

Built in the heyday of variety theatre, the foundation stone was laid in 1907 and was built for an audience of 2,100.

Constructed at a cost of £15,000, the Warrington Guardian declared ‘it would be difficult to conceive of a more comfortable and inviting place of entertainment than the latest addition to our local places of amusement’.

Its life included stints as a music hall, cinema, theatre and bingo hall before becoming a nightclub in more recent times. It was later known as the Palace Cinema and Royal Court Theatre.

The Hippodrome was built for Frank Macnaghten and constructed by CW Davenport and opened on Monday, September 23, 1907.

It went on to stage a number variety shows and the like until late 1931 when it was converted for full time cinema use.

During its cinema years the balconies were closed off and the projection room had to be accessed from outside the building.

Cinema use ended in November 1964 and the theatre was then converted for bingo by Hutchinson’s and rebranded ‘Surewin Bingo’.

Later named Apollo Bingo it eventually closed altogether in 1997 and spent a number of years empty, but was later converted for nightclub use and opened under the name of Brannigans.

 

The knife was found by security at Trilogy nightclub

The unit was most recently Trilogy

 

It will soon reopen as Truth after its previous life as Trilogy and Showbar came to an end during the pandemic.

Much of the interior is closed but some of its original form still remains.

 Do you remember the Hippodrome as a cinema, a theatre or a bingo hall?

Send in your memories to newsdesk@guardiangrp.co.uk.

Or you can write to us via Yester Years, Newsdesk, Warrington Guardian, Unit 4, 240 Cygnet Court, Centre Park, Warrington, Cheshire WA1 1PP.