Old photo will bring back happy memories for hordes of cinema-goers in this Milton Keynes town

A photo of the old Electra cinema in Newport Pagnell is guaranteed to bring back happy memories for hordes of local people.

The picture shows the owner Miss Margaret Salmons standing outside the building, which entered audiences for more than 75 years.

Miss Salmons ruled the cinema with an iron rod until she was in her 80s, shining a red torch on noisy children and ordering them to ‘shush’.

Hundreds of local youngsters flocked to the ‘Saturday morning pictures’ there, often queuing to get in.

"Parents were happy to let us go alone, safe in the knowledge that Miss Salmons and her usherettes would keep us in check. I think I was only about five or six when I was allowed to go with my older brother,” recalls one Newportonian.

"We had to stand for the national anthem, then there was a cartoon and then the main Saturday film started.”

There was always an interval, during which an Electra worker walked to the front of a cinema with a tray of ice creams and lollies for people to buy.

"The seats were prickly red velvet and there were ashtrays in the back of seat so people could smoke. The place always smelled of stale smoke but nobody minded in those days,” recalls another cinema-goer.

The Electric opened as a theatre in December 1912. The front of the building was originally built as a Georgian doctor’s house, with the auditorium built in the rear garden.

In the1930s a British Acoustic sound system was fitted and the place was re-named The Electra Cinema around 1936.

It closed in 1988, mainly due to competition from The Point, CMK’s new 10 screen mulitplex cinema, which had opened in 1985. The Electra site became a shopping arcade and the auditorium section was later partially demolished.

Another casualty of The Point was once-popular Bletchley cinema, which closed down in 1986

Thirty years later, The Point iself closed and a developer is now hoping to build housing on the site.

The Electra photographs are courtesy of the popular Facebook page called Milton Keynes Past and Present, which has more than 20,000 members.