Ritz Cinema, Market Harborough

There is a posting about the disagreement between Odeon and Disney over the new Alice in Wonderland film on the blog that its arts editor Will Gompertz writes for the BBC. For reasons best known to the BBC, one of the illustrations with it shows the old Ritz Cinema in Market Harborough.

The Ritz closed in 1978, so the only films I saw there were Jaws and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When I moved here in 1973, you could see the remains of what had been two other cinemas in the town.

Later the Ritz became a Kwiksave and that in turn closed some years ago. Since then the building has been derelict. There were rumours that Waitrose wanted to redevelop the site, but nothing came of it.

There is also a campaign to bring a cinema back to the town, which has its eyes on the site.

Meanwhile, this Ritz today looks something like this...