Roll Credits, Roll Carpet: In Search of Fordbridge’s Vanished Screen

There is a moment, standing on Mill Lane with your back to the charity shop, when the past almost taps you on the shoulder. The building in front of you sells carpet. The window is full of samples in sensible beiges. But look above the doorway, under the modern fascia, and there is a stone lintel with a shallow rectangular scar where letters used to sit. For decades, this was the Regal — Fordbridge’s last picture house — and for a lot of local people, that scar is the closest thing we have to a monument.

The cinema opened in 1912 as the Fordbridge Electric Theatre, a name that sounds more like a substation than a night out. It became the Regal in 1937, after a refurbishment that added a balcony, a proper projection box and the kind of crimson seating that made an ordinary Thursday feel like an occasion. The last film rolled in 1963. By 1971, the stalls had been flattened, the screen taken down and the smell of popcorn replaced by underlay. Bramwell’s Carpets has traded there ever since.

But a building does not lose its past just because it gains a carpet display. Over the last few weeks, I have been following the trail of the Regal’s bits and pieces around town — a seat here, a sign there, a projector in a shed — and asking what Fordbridge kept when the lights went down for the last time.

The door with the brass kick-plate

My first stop was the shop itself. Priya Bramwell, who runs the family business with her brother, is used to people peering at the ceiling instead of the carpet.

“We get one or two a month,” she says. “Usually someone who used to come here as a child. They stand in the doorway and say, ‘I saw Bedknobs and Broomsticks in this room.’ We have a laugh about it, because the room is full of carpet rolls now. But I like it. It means the building still means something.”

The brass kick-plate on the internal door is original, worn smooth in the middle. So is a narrow wooden handrail up a short flight of stairs to what is now a stockroom but was once the balcony. The projection box was removed long ago, though its outline remains in the brickwork at the back, a rectangle of lighter mortar. If you know what you are looking for, the Regal is still in the room. You just have to squint.

Sixpence, a serial and a bag of Mint Imperials

Doreen Pemberton, 84, remembers the Saturday matinees better than she remembers last week. She grew up off Chapel Yard and was a regular at the Regal from the age of seven.

“You queued down Mill Lane with your sixpence and your mum’s old coat,” she says. “The usherette had a torch and a tray, and you could get a Kia-Ora and a little bag of Mint Imperials for threepence. We watched serials — Flash Gordon, mostly — and you’d come out blinking into the daylight feeling like you’d been somewhere else entirely.”

She remembers the manager, Mr Ambrose, standing at the back with his arms folded, and the way the curtains used to judder before they opened. She also remembers the cold.

“There was no heating worth speaking of,” she says. “You kept your coat on. But nobody minded. It was the pictures. It was the only place in Fordbridge where you could go somewhere else for two hours.”

Alan Frisby, 79, worked at the Regal for two years as a teenager, mostly sweeping up and rewinding. He remembers the projectionist, a quiet man called Ken Holt, and the smell of carbon arcs.

“Ken let me change the reel once,” Alan says. “I was terrified. You had to be quick or the whole lot would run out and the screen would go white. He stood behind me and said, ‘Steady, lad.’ I still think about that when I’m doing anything fiddly.”

Where the seats went

The Regal had 312 seats. When the cinema closed, most were sold off or given away. A handful ended up at Lower Fordbridge Village Hall, where 14 still do duty for the annual general meeting and the Christmas whist drive. They have cast-iron frames, wooden backs and a slight lean to the left, which regulars blame on the floor rather than the seats.

Another six went to the snooker room at the Conservative Club on Bridge Street, where they were recovered in the 1980s in a green velour that has since gone shiny. Two more are in a garage on Chapel Yard, stacked behind a lawnmower. One, according to local rumour, is in a shed belonging to a man who will not answer his door.

The carpet shop has one, too. It sits by the till, reupholstered in a sturdy wool mix, and is used by customers who need to sit down while they think about underlay. It is not the most glamorous retirement for a cinema seat, but it is a useful one. Fordbridge has always been good at that — finding a second job for something that still has life in it.

The projector in the shed

The projector is the real prize. A 35mm Kalee, bought by the Regal in 1937 and sold off when the cinema closed. For years it sat in Ken Holt’s garage on Albert Road. After he died, his son moved it to a shed in the back garden, under a tarpaulin and a stack of plant pots.

I went to see it on a damp Tuesday morning. It is heavy, oily and beautiful in the way that old machinery often is. The rewind bench is still there. So is a tin of spare carbons. The lens has a slight chip at the edge.

“Dad would have wanted it to go somewhere it could be seen,” says Ken’s son, Michael. “He didn’t keep it to hoard it. He kept it because he couldn’t bear to see it scrapped. If someone could get it running again, I’d be the first to buy a ticket.”

The sign under a tarpaulin

The Regal’s sign was a long wooden board with individual metal letters. When the shop changed hands, the letters were taken down and stored in a garage on Chapel Yard. Most are still there, wrapped in an old curtain. The R has a broken fixing. The E is missing entirely. One of the Gs was used for years as a brace on a garden gate in Lower Fordbridge, which feels like the most Fordbridge thing imaginable.

It is not a complete set. It is not even a coherent set. But it is enough to spell something, if you are not fussy about vowels.

Why a pop-up might not be a fantasy

All of this raises an obvious question: could Fordbridge have its screen back, just for one night? A small group of residents, including a couple of members of the Fordbridge Film Society, think so. They have been quietly asking around about a pop-up screening in the Market Hall — a projector, a screen, a few dozen chairs and a film that people actually remember seeing at the Regal.

The obstacles are practical rather than romantic. The Kalee needs servicing. The Market Hall needs a licence. Someone needs to find a screen that does not smell of dust. But none of it is impossible. Fordbridge has form for this sort of thing: the repair café started with a few broken kettles and a trestle table, and look at it now.

“We are not trying to reopen the Regal,” says one of the organisers, Ruth Callaghan. “We just want to remember it properly. One night. A proper interval. Maybe an usherette with a torch. If people enjoy it, we can think about another.”

What a town keeps

A town does not keep everything. It keeps the lintel and the kick-plate. It keeps 14 seats in a village hall and a projector under a tarpaulin. It keeps the story of a queue down Mill Lane and a man called Ken saying “steady, lad.” It loses the rest, or lets it become something else — a carpet shop, a stockroom, a brace on a garden gate.

That is not necessarily a sad ending. The Regal is still there, in pieces, all over Fordbridge. You just have to know where to look. And if the pop-up screening does happen, I will be in the queue, sixpence in hand, hoping the curtains still judder.