The History
The Embassy Cinema was built on the site of the former Picture Palace Cinema of 1912.
It was built for and was operated by the Shipman and King circuit, and opened in April 1935. It was the first cinema in that circuit to be named ‘Embassy’.
Standing on a corner site, the imposing building had seating in stalls and circle levels. Originally it was designed to seat 1005 people. At the time the planning was submitted, the population of Braintree was little more than 9000, so a cinema of modest capacity was anticipated and eventually built. The architects, Kemp & Tasker, designed a cinema with an imposing brick faced curved facade that followed the line of the corner.
It had a Christie 3 manual 6 ranks organ. It was equipped with stage facilities and dressing rooms, and had a café for the convenience of patrons.
The first film shown in the Embassy was “Things Are Looking Up”, starring Max Miller and Cicely Courtneige.
The Embassy cinema’s main entrance lobby, cash desk, balcony staircase & stalls entrance. There were three sets of double doors to the entrance lobby.
Attention was given to providing a working stage, dressing rooms, and a cafe
The auditorium was luxurious, with a proscenium edged in ribbed plaster work. The splay walls either side of the stage had a pronounced vertical wide ribbed design with large bordered panels containing modernistic plaster art work.
It was re-branded as Studio One in 1967 when the Star Cinemas circuit took over. This company introduced bingo into the building. It continued as a cine/bingo site until March 1988. A year later the name Embassy was placed back onto the building as an ambitious independent exhibitor refurbished the cinema, re-opening it during 1989. Regrettably this venture was short lived with closure following in April of 1991. Another attempt was made to re-open the building as a cinema in the January of 1992. The new operator decided to use just the balcony area of 333 seats and re-naming it the Embassy Arena Cinema. This lasted less than two years with the building closing as a cinema for the final time in late 1993. Plans were submitted to convert the building into a nightclub. These were rejected.
It was used for a dodgy indoor market in the mid 90’s for a year or so along with being used as a “rave” venue.
It was purchased by the JD Wetherspoon chain of pubs, and re-opened as ‘The Picture Palace’ on 26th July 1998. They sympathetically converted it for their business requirements, broadly acknowledging the rich cinema history of the building as the Embassy cinema, retaining many of the original 1935 features. Framed photographs of the cinema in its heyday now hang on the restaurant walls.
Although the cinema building was not listed, it was considered to be the best surviving example of a Shipman and King cinema in the country.
The Explore
The Embassy is hugely personal to me with it being my local cinema as a kid.
Every week we went here and I got to see such classics and Top Gun, The Care bears movie 2, Mannequin, Commando, and Arachnophobia. We let our mates in through the fire escape on a Saturday morning so only one of us had to pay, we bought shell suits and knocked off trainers when it became the market and got to watch a very early Prodigy gig here. It was great.
In 1998 when it opened as a Weatherspoon’s we had no idea what one of those was. I was 23 and it became the place we hung out and got drunk for very little cost lol. It had that comfortable feeling that only a “spoons” can have but even more so as we all remember going there to see films.
Over the years I’ve always wondered what the upstairs was like…
The Embassy had a huge curved staircase to the right hand side as you went in the main doors. This however had been removed when it became a spoons. It looked for years like there was no way upstairs.
I’ve pretty much begged the staff in there over the years to let me up to have a look at the projector room. Being met with a firm “No” every single time.
A few months back I asked again and was again told “no” but this time I was told that they would be doing some work there soon and had a plan to build a “roof garden”
I took this in and pretty much heard “soon we will be covered in scaffolding”
“Ah-ha!”
So fast forward to a few weekends back and I was driving through town and glanced up the road towards “spoons” my heart flipped and I spun the car around to have a better look at the scaffolding that had caught my attention.
That was it! It was finally doable.
On the Saturday night a few friends come for a BBQ so once the food was out of the way myself, @rapid_ascent, @clebby, @WhoDaresWins , @Endproc and @Seffy all jumped in my van and we headed out for a different kind of “spoons with goons”
We hid the van down a side road and approached The Embassy, yup we were about to explore a derp projection room in an open and very busy “spoons”
Hmmmmm it was a little busier at 10:30pm than we had hoped, but eventually the time came and I shot up the scaff with the intention of getting in via the roof and coming down and popping a fire door. It was all going well until the scaff made a noise and some drunken “braintreeite” screamed in her best Essex accent, “ there’s a man on the scaffolding”
I believe @clebby drunkenly called her a "Snake" lol
Fuck it
The bouncers appeared and just looked at me, I looked at them, they looked at me, and I decided to climb back down
Nothing happened they went back in and we carried on hanging around.
Eventually another gap in people appeared and @Seffy went up and made it to the roof. He found his way into the projection room and down the stairwell to the afore mentioned Saturday morning fire escape. We waited for a gap in the human traffic and Seff popped the door and in we went.
Wow talk about memories flooding back, the stairwell we ran up and down as kids made me grin like an idiot lol.
The original doors I use to walk through as a kid to go see a film sadly now hidden on the stairwell.
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