Blackhall Colliery
The Regal Super Cinema, Blackhall Colliery
Last Updated:
16 May 2025
Blackhall Colliery
This is a
Cinema
54.748983, -1.291509
Founded in
Current status is
Redeveloped
Designer (if known):
Now a memorial garden
The rise of cinemas and picture houses on the Durham coast was extensive, and so was the chopping board...
This was the site of another at Blackhall Colliery - the Regal. Actually though, its first name was the Super Cinema and was opened in September 1925. This handsome but relatively basic design was quite common amongst picture houses in those days. It was reported being a "large commodious building, bang up to date in every respect" with "the furnishings being most pleasing and comfortable". Such was the intent of Mr Joseph Cadman, a local entrepreneur who opened this site among others. The Miners Hall at Ferryhill was also under his name.
It was fully refitted in 1931, with a new sound system added by new owners Yoden Pictures. They owned a couple of the cinemas we've talked about this past week. From there it was renamed the Regal Super Cinema, which remained in use through the war and into the 50s. This was reputedly the towns flea pit, i.e the really run down picture house that hosted cheap films (and often dirty ones too). They kept trundling along by attracting the crowds with a dirt cheap experience.
I sound a bit like a broken record by this point, but its use was converted into a part time bingo hall in the 60s becoming full time soon after. This was an early victim of the wider cinema-bingo hall depression though, being culled in 1984 and demolished within the past decade or so.
Today, it has been replaced with a memorial pit wheel in tribute to the colliery which fostered this whole village.
Listing Description (if available)
Blackhall Colliery has only really existed in its current form for about a century. The collieries totally transformed this whole landscape, not just regarding the towering winding engines and conveyors but the literal formation of new villages which still stand. The maps are descending back in time here, with the 1940s map the first to show the cinema on what we would say is a complete plan of Blackhall. But only 20 years prior, the village was still in its fundamentals. The Hardwick Hotel underpins the village, but no cinema nor churches. Hardwick Blue House was the oldest structure in the village which partially remains today.
Using the Blue House as a reference, we see little familiarity to the area today. The whole area was farmed, surrounding by dene's and gill's making it a fairly serene beauty spot. Before the bridge over Castle Eden Burn, folk with wagons would be forced to either cross a ford at Dene Holm, the rickety Dungy Bridge or actually make their way back to Castle Eden.
The site of the Regal Cinema in April 2025
The cinema-cum-bingo hall just before closure (or perhaps just after) in the 1980s. By this time it was an absolute pale of its former self.
Unknown original source
The cinema was still standing for at least a couple of decades, as seen on this newspaper clipping from the 2000s.
Unknown original source