Radstock is seeped in history, but not everyone will know that it also once had a thriving and lively cinema.

The Palace was a gem in the town and a favourite, particularly for the local kids who enjoyed the Saturday matinees. It first started showing films in 1912 when it was called the Variety Palace. But it had started as a community asset nearly a century earlier, as the first major place of worship for the local Methodists.

The building began as the Radstock Wesleyan Methodist chapel built in 1816 and was extended in 1840 to include a school class room. The Methodists then moved into the large chapel which is the big building on Fortescue Road in 1902.

So with a large empty building what could be done?

Well let the movies run of course.

How the building looks today : Radstock April 21

It was operated by the pioneering theatre proprietor and cinema developer Albany Ward, who owned theatres and cinemas all over the South West. In the 1920s, Albany Ward sold his theatres and, in late 1930s the now renamed as The Picture Palace in Radstock was taken over by the E Truman Dicken Circuit. 

One can only imagine the excitement of seeing films across a 21 foot wide stage, although for some time the first few rows of seats were still the old chapel seats.

But the march of time, or rather the march of film put paid to the life of the building as a cinema, with the dazzling arrival of CinemaScope.

That was a ground-breaking new widescreen film process that revolutionised filmmaking in the 1950s and was part of a drive to tempt Americans away from their new television sets.

According to the British Film Institute, most movie scholars believe the first big scale film was Henry Koster's The Robe (in 1953). But in fact the first film produced in CinemaScope was Jean Negulesco's How to Marry a Millionaire, which was rushed into production alongside Robert D. Webb's Beneath the 12-mile Reef to give 20th Century-Fox a head start in the widescreen race to lure Americans away from their new television sets.

The Palace shut for good in 1956 and since the 1970s the site has been a carpet and bedding warehouse the Radstock Carpet and Bed Centre but the address is still The Old Cinema.

Thank you to Radstock Museum for the photos of the projectionists and the team at The Palace. Believed to have been taken in either 1955 or 1956.