Doubts over future of bombed cinema as rival plans backed

Campaigners have been working on proposals to turn the National Picture Theatre on Beverley Road into a memorial to the 1,200 civilians who died in the Nazi bombardment of the city and an educational resource for schoolchildren.

The grade two listed cinema is the only blitzed civilian building ruin left standing in England and has been described as of “iconic importance”.

The proposals were unanimously passed by councillors at Hull’s Guildhall, but at the same meeting they also approved alternative plans by owners Reid Park Properties, which wants to put up a new building behind the old frontage, with a restaurant downstairs and six flats upstairs.

The flats’ plans will now have to go to the Secretary of State for approval.

Planning consultant Doug Jennings said the owner would discuss any proposal from the trust.

He said: “He’d be happy to receive a proposal and see where it goes from there, but it must include time-scales.”

He added: “He is pleased that after this inordinately long period he had got permission from the council. He’d also like to point out at the end of the day it is a compromise between ensuring an appropriate development for him, as well as safeguarding a significant amount of the listed structure.”

Under the owner’s plans, the facade, foyer and first set of steps will be preserved. Mr Jennings said the owner’s biggest disappointment was the listing of the building when he was “ready and raring to go”. He said: “Because of the downturn in the economy we are in a worse placed position than four years ago.”

National Civilian WW2 Memorial Trust secretary Alan Canvess said he was pleased that the door was still open. “The owner is very much in the driving seat,” he said. “If he says there’s still a possibility of us buying the site it is good news as we can still press ahead with our application for funding.

“Nothing can be done to the site until conditions are decided and there’s approval from the Secretary of State so there’s still a long way to go.”

Mr Canvess and other members of the trust had argued against the flats plans which they branded “destructive, harmful and insensitive”.

Trust member Hilary Byers told the committee the loss of parts of the foyer, switch rooms and rear staircases would “detract from the historical relevance of the site and destroy the poignancy and character of the site.”

But councillors were keen for action on the site, which has been hidden behind hoardings for years. Coun Craig Woolmer said the state of the building was “unacceptable” and “not a fit monument for those who died in World War Two.”

Coun John Fareham called it an “overgrown bramble-strewn site with a hobo living in it” and Coun Tom McVie – whose grandmother was blown out of her seat when the cinema she was in got bombed during the Blitz – said they need to “take out what is an absolute eyesore, a blight on this city.”

Only a handful of councillors spoke up to keep all of the ruined structure, among them Coun Pete Allen, who was a young boy during the war. He said something needed to remain to show children what bombing meant. But Coun Sheila Waudby, who was seven when the war started, said there was “nothing there to see”.

The planning committee gave the green light to Reid Park Properties’ plans last January, but the amendments the committee had requested were only considered at the meeting on Wednesday. Coun Fareham said the process had been “tardy in the extreme.”

Luftwaffe made port city suffer

During the war Hull was one of the most heavily bombed cities in the UK. Air raids went on longer in Hull than any other city, even after the opening of the Russian front in June 1941.

The National Picture Theatre took a direct hit on March 17 1941, the night it was showing the Charlie Chaplin movie The Great Dictator. Around 150 people sheltering in the foyer remarkably survived unscathed.