“Four Ways” Cinema Charlestown Road /Moston Lane East New Moston

Opened 1939. 1,256 seats. Proscenium width 38 feet. Closed 1973.

Erection of a new cinema in Moston Lane East, New Moston, for which the residents have been waiting for over ten years will mean that a desolate estate will be opened up for the first time. Ever since the building of the New Moston Estate the residents have had to walk nearly a mile to a cinema and the shopping estates and have earned the reputation of living in the most “dead” housing estate in Manchester.  Notices of the new project, posted this week, have been warmly welcomed by the officials of the local associations as a sign that some life is to be put into the estate, which has now only one public house and churches as meeting places.

The new cinema will be erected this winter at the junction of Charlestown Road and Moston Lane East, New Moston. It will be one of the chain of cinemas being built around Manchester by the Snape syndicate, owners of the Ambassador, Pendleton, the Ellesmere, Swinton and the Magnet, Failsworth. Anticipating the building of a new road, the new cinema will be known as the “Four Ways,” will cost £20,000 and seat 1350 people on one floor. Messrs Drury and Gomersall, the Manchester architects, are now preparing the final plans. Building will commence this winter. [Manchester City News 24 September 1938 Page 3]

Reference    Manchester City News 24 September 1938 Page 3
Reference    Builder 17 March 1939. Page 542 (New Cinemas)
Reference    Gould