Last week saw the demolition of Linenhall Street after decades of neglect something welcomed by local residents. In fact work had been ongoing for weeks behind the scenes in preperation for the demolition.
One build however which has caused much controversy is the old Ballymoney Cinema known as the Palladium in its day. Opened in 1937, its was the main attraction in Ballymoney based up in high street. Local folk of a certain age remember many a good time had within its doors. It was even rumoured at a time that Ballymoney got its nick name ‘Cow Town’ due to the amount of cowboy films shown in the cinema.
Unfortunatly in 1969 the cinema showed it’s last film ‘Planet Of The Apes’, and closed its doors for good. Many of the fixtures including the projectors were left inside and pictures surfaced recently from within the old cinema showing these.
PICTURE CREDIT: Irishmanlost (Facebook)
Unfortunatly the cinema was neglected and fell into disrepair as the pictures from within showed. A campagn in 2009 saw a new intrest in the cinema with many locals calling for it to repaired and opened for public use either a a working cinema, museum or event space. This was not to be due to the extensive work needed not to mention its crumbling structure.
The cinema frontage did however get a facelift with the instalation of fake shop fronts which gave a feel to how it may had looked back in it’s day. Unfortunatly these too were only tempory as last year the Linenhall Street site, of which the old cinema is part of, was sold to a new owner and plans began to flatten the whole site including the cinema. An application to list the building was submitted but this was rejected as the building was in the style of Art Deco and not actually Art Deco and had no historical value. That coupled with the money that would be required to preserve out weighed the option to keep.
So as of yesterday the 9th March 2017, the old Palladium cinema is no longer and there is a cinema shaped gap on high street where the building once stood making way for the next stage of the project, new builds on the site which at this stage is anyones guess.
JC
