Qualla: Alhambra Theatre, Morecambe

Alhambra Theatre, Morecambe: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit --Immanuel Giel 09:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC), Public domain. A magician walked onto the Alhambra's stage on the 4th of April 1901, the night the curtain first went up. His name was Chung Ling Soo, and he was about to become one of the most famous illusionists of the early twentieth century — a man whose entire identity, it later turned out, was its own trick. The audience filling the West End promenade theatre that opening evening did not yet know any of this. They knew only that Morecambe had a grand new venue, named after the Moorish palace in Granada though styled nothing like it, and that the seaside resort meant to take itself seriously.

Image: --Immanuel Giel 09:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC) | Public domain

Alhambra Theatre, Morecambe: A Local Project, Built for the West End

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kursaalflier, CC BY-SA 4.0. Everything about the Alhambra Palace was local. Two developers, John Gardner and John Scott, conceived it. The young architect Herbert Howarth designed it. The builder John Edmondson — responsible for most of Morecambe's great buildings, including the Park Hotel up Regent Road — ...

Image: Kursaalflier | CC BY-SA 4.0

Alhambra Theatre, Morecambe: Olivier, Variety, and the Astoria

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kursaalflier, CC BY-SA 4.0. For seventy years the Alhambra adapted to whatever the times asked of it. By 1910 it was licensed as a cinema and showed films between live revues. In the 1920s it became the Astoria Super Cinema. When the Second World War came, the building was requisitioned for the war effort a...

Image: Kursaalflier | CC BY-SA 4.0

Alhambra Theatre, Morecambe: Fire, Carleton, Northern Soul

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kursaalflier, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1970 a projector caught fire in the upper tiers. The entire wood structure of the interior collapsed inward, though the fly tower's open space saved the rest of the building. The walls held. The fire took the elaborate Dutch gable and the distinctive sun-burner turret from the...

Image: Kursaalflier | CC BY-SA 4.0

Alhambra Theatre, Morecambe: Volunteers and a Slow Return

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephen Armstrong, CC BY-SA 2.0. The same year it closed, a local developer named Ian Bond rescued it. The street-level shops were brought back to life — the central market space already housed Gerry's Fishing, the region's largest angling store — and the upstairs became an entertainment, conference and communit...

Image: Stephen Armstrong | CC BY-SA 2.0