Exploring Teesside’s old picture houses, movies, flicks and flea pits...

MIDDLESBROUGH once had a Grand Opera House, opened in 1903 on the corner of Linthorpe and Southfield roads.

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To fill the summer season, the theatre began showing films. By 1914, the big screen was so popular that cinema was added to the schedule. This tentative relationship continued throughout the 1920s under the ownership of Middlesbrough's king of cinema, Thomas Thompson.

The final live performance bowed out in 1930. The opera house was gutted, and the Gaumont Palace cinema opened in 1931. The seating had been redesigned and extended, and a cinema organ replaced the orchestra pit. New owners Trent & Tully acknowledged the building's heritage, commissioning a Frank Barnes mural telling the town’s industrial journey. The Rank Organisation closed the Gaumont in 1964.