For half a century, Tyneside filmgoers flocked to the ABC cinema on Newcastle’s Percy Street. The recently closed venue is seen in 1984 in a photograph showing signage and branding gone, doors locked for good, and inside, the big screen and stalls where countless thousands once enjoyed the latest films sat abandoned.
The Evening Chronicle had reported earlier that year: “One of Newcastle’s few remaining cinemas is to close its doors. The ABC Haymarket, one of the last great Art Deco picture houses, screens its last film in September. EMI Cinemas Ltd has told Newcastle University, which owns the building, that it will not be renewing the lease. This means the city centre will have a grand total of two cinemas owned by the major chains - the Odeon and the ABC Westgate Road - as well as the Tyneside Cinema.”
A Geordie rite of passage
The Percy Street venue opened as the Haymarket Cinema just before Christmas 1933, at the dawn of the silver screen’s heyday, with a now-forgotten British comedy, Just Smith, starring Tom Walls. For the rest of its lifespan, the place would be known to local moviegoers as ‘the Haymarket’, despite becoming an ABC when it was absorbed by the powerful Associated British Cinemas chain in 1936.
The building’s audience capacity was initially 1,700, increasing to 2,013, and finally to 2,200. Alongside the Odeon on Pilgrim Street, watching a film at the Haymarket was a Geordie rite of passage. On a personal note, I remember seeing the blockbuster Jaws there with my school mates in 1976.
Decline of the silver screen
The Percy Street venue was one of 4,500 cinemas that opened and immediately thrived across the UK during the 1930s and ‘40s. Cheap admission and few rival entertainments saw audience figures rocket. But, from the mid-1950s, decline set in as more households acquired televisions, and family leisure tastes and habits altered.
By the 1970s, the estimated number of cinemas in the UK had fallen to 800. The arrival of home video players, coupled with ageing cinema buildings and soaring operating costs, brought closures pushing that figure down to 400 in the 1980s.
Final film and demolition
The last film to be screened at the Haymarket would be Purple Rain, the rock musical drama starring Prince, on September 20, 1984. It was the end of an era. In March 1985, the cinema building was demolished, while its neighbours, including Thorne’s Students’ Bookshop (as also seen in our photograph), were knocked down soon after.
The closure prompted a feature in the Chronicle that was a lament for Newcastle’s lost cinemas. It listed those that in 1954 - 30 years earlier - had appeared on the paper’s listing pages, nearly all of which had since closed down. It remains a roll call that evokes a vanished way of life and a once-vibrant aspect of Newcastle culture.
In the city centre, there were the Queens, the Pavilion, the Olympia, the Grainger, the Essoldo, the Stoll, the Gaumont, the Picturedrome, the Tatler, the News Theatre, the Haymarket and the Odeon. Over in the city’s west end were the Gem, the Brighton, the Orion, the Plaza, the Regal, the Rialto, the Embassy, the Majestic, the Crown, the Regent, the Rex and the Savoy. And in the east end were the Black’s Regal, the Scala, the Heaton, the Lyric, the Reno, the Raby Grand, the Brinkburn, the Jesmond, the Globe, the Royalty, the Ritz, the Gloria, the Welbeck, the Bamborough, the Imperial and the Vaudeville.
In 2026, there is no trace of the former ABC Haymarket cinema on Percy Street. The site is today occupied by modern buildings belonging to Newcastle University.
