Empire Palace, Barnsley

This building has been erected for Mr Will Smithson as a variety theatre with a seating capacity of 2,500. The scheme was designed to cater largely for the Yorkshire miners, and the gallery, for this reason, is unusually large, containing half the whole seating accommodation. The contractors were Messrs England Limited, of Barnsley. The architects are Messrs North, Robin and Wilsdon of Regent Streer, London. It is a steel-framed building with Darley Dale stone front. [Building News 15 July 1921 page 37]

Reference           Building News 15 July 1921  page 37 with illustration

Various sources generally state that The Empire Palace of Varieties Theatre opened on 8 June 1908 and was later converted into the Empire Super Cinema, opening on 22 March 1920. The item reference in Building News appeaers to have been published shortly after this conversion.

The building was destroyed by fire on 2 January 1954. A new cinema to the deigns of T P Bennet and Partners was constructed on the same site and opened as the new Gaumont in 1956. The cinema was renamed the Odeon in 1962. It closed in 2005, reopening as the Parkway independent cinema on 8 August 2007.