Northwood Hills Residents Association

Time to look back and see what Northwood Hills was like in the by gone years.

The old Rex cinema may jog the memory of some the ‘senior’ inhabitancy of the area. The cinema was opened in 1936, about the time my family moved to Northwood Hills from Harrow, where I was born.It was built by Harry Neal, who did most of the construction work to the west side of The Broadway in the early ‘30s.It started life as the ‘Odeon’ and became the ‘ Rex’ when taken on by Shipman and King.he old Rex cinema may jog the memory of some the ‘senior’ inhabitancy of the area. The cinema was opened in 1936, about the time my family moved to Northwood Hills from Harrow, where I was born.It was built by Harry Neal, who did most of the construction work to the west side of The Broadway in the early ‘30s.It started life as the ‘Odeon’ and became the ‘ Rex’ when taken on by Shipman and King.

My earliest recollection of the Rex was of my mother taking me to see a feature length cartoon at the age of about six in 1941. In the early days of cinema we always had the benefit of at least two films with an interlude for ice cream. The second half usually began with newsreel footage from around the world, maybe a short cartoon, all for one shilling and nine pence [1/9d], that’s about eight and a half new pence, for the benefit of the young visitor’s to the web- site.

Saturday morning was the best time for the young cinema goers, cartoon’s, wild west movie’s, Laurel and Hardy and a film in episode form to entice you to return the following week to discover the fate of the hero, or heroine, left in some diabolical predicament! The price of all the seats, down stairs only, on these accessions was a ‘tanner’, six pence old money or two and a half, new pence! The Rex didn’t cater for the Saturday show for us ‘kids’, so we walked, to either to the ‘Langham’ in Pinner or the ‘Ideal’ in Eastcote, sometime referred to as the ‘flea-pit’! A great time for meeting and ‘chatting up’ the opposite sex, as I recall!!

As the war year’s progressed the cinema became an important part of every day life to the parents of my generation; we had news broadcasts on the radio of course but the newsreel films bought home more vividly the horrors of the conflict. We now have television to give us all the news stories from near and far at the flick of the good old remote control. Fortunately we still have a chance to relive the good old days of the ‘flicks’ with some of the old favourites getting a second, or even a third screening on the ‘box’. They possessed a very rare commodity in those days, not often found in modern films, dialogue!

Sadly the television brought on the demise of the local cinemas and the Rex was no exception. The Rex was pulled down and replaced with a supermarket. The supermarket has since been pulled down and a number of flats built on the site.

Within the Northwood ward, we still have the remnants of our very first local cinema, or picture palace, as they were called, the ‘Northwood Picture House’, later to become the ‘Ritz’, and first opened in 1913! But that’s another story.

The Northwood Hills Residents Association would like to thank Alan Hoare for this information.