A Tale of Two Princes

 

Let’s start with a bit of context. Although we are only talking about one Princes cinema, there were actually two, on the same site at 20 Gourlay Street in Springburn.

In its heyday Springburn was a thriving, bustling suburb sustained by heavy engineering, notably the Hyde Park Locomotive works and the Caledonian works, known universally as ‘The Caley’. These works were so big that my maternal grandmother used to tell me she would often be wakened by the sound of workers’ boots on the cobbles at the shift change.

Springburn had all of the commercial, retail, leisure and community amenities of the city centre on its own doorstep. That included three cinemas – the Kinema, the Astor – formerly the Springburn Picture House and known locally as the Wellfield – and the Princes. Although others may be mentioned in passing, this work will mostly concentrate on the Princes.

The original Prince’s (above) was opened in September 1914 as a cine-variety theatre by John Maxwell, the man who went on to build the ABC circuit. As the name suggests, cine-variety was a fusion of live variety acts and moving pictures on the same bill, the acts would perform and a selection of films was shown at the finale, and often at the end of the first half. It was hugely popular and cine-variety was responsible for the rapid and sustained growth of moving pictures in Glasgow in the 1910s.

The first Prince’s was closed and demolished in 1936 to be replaced by another cinema, also known as the Princes (below). The new cinema had dropped the apostrophe from its name, was much larger than the original at 2050 seats, and was opened on November 8, 1937 as part of the ABC circuit. The opening film was After the Thin Man with William Powell and Myrna Loy.

One final sidebar. Although the cinema was a fixture in Springburn for more than fifty years I don’t think that, growing up, I ever heard its name pronounced as it was spelled. Locally it was pronounced as if it had an additional ‘s’, i.e. ‘the Princess’.

I don’t know why, it just was. In common  with others my age I was more concerned with the price of sweets at Birrell's than semantics.