Life-long Ross resident, Sandra Ashcroft Harper, recently came across a momento of happy times spent at the Roxy Cinema in Ross-on-Wye. She found a programme for forthcoming attractions in August 1961.

The small leaflet is in excellent condition and was among some of her mother’s possessions. Sandra is not sure why her mother kept it, or if the date was significant, but she said it brought back many memories of visiting the cinema.

At the time, the cinema was showing films continuously on Saturdays from 2pm and on other days from 5pm. There was also a café which was open from 10am to 10pm every day.

The Roxy was opened in April 1939 and a report of the opening appears in the Ross Gazette dated April 13th, 1939. The cinema was quite advanced for the small town of Ross. The auditorium, which had 611 seats, boasted air conditioning and wireless aids for the deaf in all seats.

There is a brief history and some photographs of the Roxy Luxury Cinema on the website www.ross-on-wye.com

Fred Seymour was the manager from 1939 until 1950 when he fell foul of the Fire Authorities. A fire officer paid a flying visit to the operating box one evening to find no one in charge. The unsupervised assistant operator was running the show and out on the fire escape deck smoking. The film was still of the inflammable nitrate stock in those days, so it was a most serious situation.

The Ross Cinema and Theatre company Ltd. was prosecuted and heavily fined in Ross Magistrates Court for serious infringements of its Cinematograph Licence and hauled before the County entertainment committee with a view to having its licence revoked, which would have meant closure. The company was obliged to dismiss the manager and appoint a new one.

In 1950, Mervyn Tommey recently demobbed from the Navy was appointed to the post. An additional condition was that the new manager would be required to live in the Cinema flat. In those days nobody had access to a modern unfurnished flat so having only recently married Mr Tommey couldn’t believe his good fortune.

Sometime in the late 1960s, the owner of the building, Mr WJB Halls, suggested that as the town had never had a town hall that perhaps the Ross Urban District Council might be interested in purchasing the property for that purpose.

He pointed out that the flat and café could be easily adapted to re-accommodate the council offices and chamber, and that the council would be able to dispose of their existing building to offset a large proportion of the costs.

Mr Halls said that he would be prepared to sell to the council for £20,000 and to lend them the money on a 5% mortgage. As the council premises would have been worth about £12,000, this was a great opportunity to preserve the Roxy and have a ready made town hall with car parking at the rear.

However, the proposal was rejected and, although The Roxy continued as a cinema, in 1982 it was closed, demolished and converted into a shopping area.

Sandra was born in Alton Street Hospital on the day war was declared over in 1945. She said her mother always told her that this meant she missed the celebrations for the end of the war.See this week’s paper for more stories like this, available in shops and as a Digital Edition now.