A Brief History
Foundation
As part of our work on the archive project we have been researching the history of the cinema in Sawston. We found a web page that has a lot of information – you can read it here – and it says
The tradition of the benevolent employer was continued in the 20th century by H. G. Spicer (d. 1944), who bought the paper-mill in 1917. He and his wife gave land for the village college in 1930, and in 1932 built a theatre, later converted to a cinema and closed in 1963. (fn. 42) His wife helped to found the Sawston maternity and infant welfare centre in 1918, to which H. G. Spicer left £1,000. (fn. 43) By 1961 the firm of Spicers owned more than 100 houses in the area, and in 1971 it held two blocks of flats and money in trust for necessitous former employees and their dependents. (fn. 44)
Programmes
We also have some old programmes from the cinema
Dufaycolor
The cinema is also associated with an important development in the history of film-making, Dufaycolour, as research into this method of making colour films took place over four years at the Spicer plant in Sawston in Cambridgeshire. You can read more about Dufaycolor in this article by Simon Brown on the British Film and Television Studies website.
Closure
The cinema closed in 1963, a sad day for Sawston, as this article from the Cambridge Evening News says:
Cambridge Evening News reports closure of the cinema
