Welcome to the Electric Palace!

If you haven’t heard of us before, the Electric Palace is a little one-screen cinema built in Harwich in 1911. We’re situated close to the harbour and we’re surrounded by a whole host of other heritage attractions!

The cinema was built by a former fairground Bioscope operator, Charles Thurston. He and his family were well known as travelling fairground operators in the East of England in the 2nd half of the 19th century.

The Electric Palace was the first of three cinemas that he built, the other two were in Norwich and Biggleswade.

We’ve been closed recently for a major refurbishment project, but we’ll be open again in 2021, thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England, as well as the support of hundreds of individual supporters who have donated via our crowdfunder appeal.

This funding will also allow us to offer a programme of learning and engagement activities for people of all ages and we’ll be able to share more information about these opportunities as we return to our core activity - which is showing great films!

This blog is edited and run by our Education Officer, Laura Ager. It’s here to share our history, update you with news of what’s happening at the cinema, explore some perspectives on our film programme and publish the fascinating stories about people and places that are important to the story of early cinema and the moving image. This activity will also help us to record this important phase in the cinema’s development and encourgaes us to reflect on our role as a centre for entertainment, heritage and film-based learning in the area.

We’re always interested in finding out more about our beautiful building and hearing about what the cinema means to you and has meant to its community over the years. If you have a story or memory of the cinema that you’d like to contribute to our ongoing research, please get in touch with us!