Kettering Odeon cinema first opened its doors in 1997 with James Bond , Tomorrow never dies being the first film shown there. It closed its doors for the last time on the 28th Feb 2025 with the Bob Dylan biography "A complete unknown" being its last.
The owners of the building stated that a significant decrease in the cinemas attendance since 2019 made it no longer viable . A petition signed by more than 2000 people was submitted to try and keep it open didnt achieve its goal and plans to demolish the current building and use the land as open storage have been in place since December 2024.
The explore.....
This is the place where one of my main fears doing urban exploring became a little bit too real. The fear of being inside a building with only one exit that you know of while someone outside is boarding it up on you.
Access was a simple walk in , (exit not so much) , fire exit door which we locked behind us as we went in. Considering it hadnt been closed for very long at all the level of damage was quite high whit hanging wires and smashed up things everywhere. All the screens apart from one had been torn to bits and there wasnt many chairs still intact. There was still a lot to see though so out came the camera.
As we were in the entrance hall area where costa and expensive popcorn were once sold , one of the dee explores crew spotted someone outside
"Lads, theres 2 blokes walkin around outside, look like a couple of scrappers. Good job i locked that door" an we carried on .
Itook my shots from this area and went upstairs to the projector rooms. Im happy to report that there were still projectors amd other bits here , iv waited years to see one of these things up close and over the last 6 months iv seen loads of them . A few pics later we found ourselves in the screens, iv never seen so many top end jbl speakers in one place . It was in one of these screens that we first heard the noise of a drill right in the distance , you know , that loud clicking noise they make when the clutch kicks in telling you the bolt youre screwing into the door is now tight enough to lock the door off . That noise. A short jokey conversation about being locked in was started and quickly dismissed and on we went.
Around 10 minutes later wed done what we came to do and headed for the exit . Took the bar out that wed used to lock ourselves in and pushed the bar to open. "Its locked!! , look , you can see he screws coming through the frame. " SHIT. Que the quietest internal panic attack (expertly suppressed to not look like a massive pissflap) . and a run around the place looking for a door they might have missed . It took a shove of a double door right next to the van the "scrappers" had arrived in to eventually escape. A quick search around the outside to inform the drill happy security that wed just opened the door and we were off. A nice little mooch this one was aside from the unintentional imprisonment .
Some pics.....
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10.
11.
12.
13.
14. Jbl s tho....
Thats another one done. Slowly getting through this backlog.
Thanx for havin a look at this one :-)
The owners of the building stated that a significant decrease in the cinemas attendance since 2019 made it no longer viable . A petition signed by more than 2000 people was submitted to try and keep it open didnt achieve its goal and plans to demolish the current building and use the land as open storage have been in place since December 2024.
The explore.....
This is the place where one of my main fears doing urban exploring became a little bit too real. The fear of being inside a building with only one exit that you know of while someone outside is boarding it up on you.
Access was a simple walk in , (exit not so much) , fire exit door which we locked behind us as we went in. Considering it hadnt been closed for very long at all the level of damage was quite high whit hanging wires and smashed up things everywhere. All the screens apart from one had been torn to bits and there wasnt many chairs still intact. There was still a lot to see though so out came the camera.
As we were in the entrance hall area where costa and expensive popcorn were once sold , one of the dee explores crew spotted someone outside
"Lads, theres 2 blokes walkin around outside, look like a couple of scrappers. Good job i locked that door" an we carried on .
Itook my shots from this area and went upstairs to the projector rooms. Im happy to report that there were still projectors amd other bits here , iv waited years to see one of these things up close and over the last 6 months iv seen loads of them . A few pics later we found ourselves in the screens, iv never seen so many top end jbl speakers in one place . It was in one of these screens that we first heard the noise of a drill right in the distance , you know , that loud clicking noise they make when the clutch kicks in telling you the bolt youre screwing into the door is now tight enough to lock the door off . That noise. A short jokey conversation about being locked in was started and quickly dismissed and on we went.
Around 10 minutes later wed done what we came to do and headed for the exit . Took the bar out that wed used to lock ourselves in and pushed the bar to open. "Its locked!! , look , you can see he screws coming through the frame. " SHIT. Que the quietest internal panic attack (expertly suppressed to not look like a massive pissflap) . and a run around the place looking for a door they might have missed . It took a shove of a double door right next to the van the "scrappers" had arrived in to eventually escape. A quick search around the outside to inform the drill happy security that wed just opened the door and we were off. A nice little mooch this one was aside from the unintentional imprisonment .
Some pics.....
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14. Jbl s tho....
Thats another one done. Slowly getting through this backlog.
Thanx for havin a look at this one :-)
