The Regal Cinema in Fordingbridge

On Shaftesbury Street the brick front still carries the Regal name in the Art Deco lettering of 1933. The cinema that opened that year seated about 290 people and ran until 1965, when television had thinned the audiences enough for the doors to close. Branksome China then used the building as a pottery until 2012. It stood empty for a few years after that.

Corintech, the electronics firm based in the town, bought the site in 2016. Chairman Brian Currie put roughly a million pounds into restoring the foyer close to its 1930s form and fitting a new 30-seat auditorium in the space that had been the rear stalls. The first film back on screen was Casablanca, on 30 June 2017. The rest of the building became flats for the company’s graduate recruits. Projection and sound in the new auditorium include 4K and Dolby Atmos.

The Fordingbridge Regal Cinema Club now runs the place as a not-for-profit community cinema. Anyone can buy a ticket. Full members get first notice of new screenings and a discount; day membership covers the rest.

The programme mixes recent releases, older classics, family screenings and live satellite relays from the National Theatre, the Royal Opera House and the Royal Ballet. There is a bar in the restored foyer.

Book online through the cinema’s site. Screenings are not every night, and the 30 seats mean popular titles sell out, so the what’s-on page is the place to check. For a town of this size the Regal is the picture house that was closed for more than fifty years and then brought back by the company next door.