Sheffield's Abbeydale Picture House celebrates its 100th birthday

With its huge screen, seating for more than 1,500, full-size stage for combined cinema and variety shows, and an orchestra renowned for the quality of its music, it was cinema-going at its most luxurious.

Fast forward 100 years and the Abbeydale has been lucky to survive – but is now looking forward to its second century, still doing what it was built for.

Celebrations organised to mark its centenary on Sunday, showing live scored silent films, have had to be cancelled as the city remains under tougher Tier 3 restrictions.

Jonny Best, who was due to provide live piano accompaniment, said they'd hold the event on January 17 instead.

Mr Best, who is artistic director of Yorkshire Silent Film Festival, and one of only a handful of pianists in the UK who accompany silent films, said: “The reason the centenary matters to me as a performer is there is nowhere better to experience silent film with live music.

"It is a huge screen and the acoustic is wonderful. The whole sensory side of it is really compelling.

“It is a spectacular experience and the audience feel that. It is that combination of a live experience with often very old films in a building that was created to really maximise the emotional effect of cinema.”

Its survival owes much to the fact that it became an office furniture store after closing as a cinema on July 5, 1975.

“When cinemas were being knocked down at a rate in the 1970s and 1980s, the Abbeydale Picture House had been turned into a furniture shop and that meant it escaped being knocked down,” said Mr Best.

After 1991, there were several attempts to reopen the cinema, but none completely succeeded and the building lay unused for more than a decade.

In 2012, it was bought at auction by Phil Robins, who intended to turn it into a climbing centre but decided that he really wanted to see the Picture House re-launched as a venue.

In 2017, Sheffield charity CADS signed a 25- year lease and has carried out essential repair works enabling the Abbeydale Picture House to reopen as a venue for music, film, community events and social functions.

YSFF has run events there for five years and it also one of the venues for Sheffield Doc Fest, one of the top documentary festivals in the world.

Mr Best said: “People come not just because the films and music are wonderful – being inside the building means something to people in Sheffield.

“There are a lot of memories wrapped up in Abbeydale Picture House – it a really beautiful, inspiring place to be in.

“There are music events, antique fairs and people get married there. It has only come back into use over the last five years, and that use has become more frequent in the last two.

“It really does feel like the beginning of Abbeydale’s next chapter and things look positive.”