Plaza Cinema

The Plaza Cinema opened on 2 September 1939 to a design by Liverpool architect Lionel A. G. Prichard, built for Crosby Entertainments Ltd with Art Deco detailing and a three-manual Compton organ. A government order closing public venues at the outbreak of the Second World War shut the cinema on the same day it opened, before it reopened weeks later. Converted to three screens in 1976, the cinema closed under its final commercial owner, Apollo Leisure, in November 1996, then reopened after a public campaign and was bought outright by the Plaza Community Cinema Trust in January 2000. Around fifty volunteers, ranging from teenagers to pensioners, now run box office, projection and the bar between them, and a Wurlitzer organ installation was completed in 2023.