Coliseum Buildings (Gaumont Palace & Odeon, Jokers Corner)

There is a video slideshow here of the Gaumont.

Thank you Adrian for that. What a place it was. The pit was covered over when i started going there to watch films. You could only go upstairs, and remember the box they put over the where the orchestra sat. There was an exit to the left side of the screen that took you down the stairs to the rear car-park.

Most similar buildings in Coventry were owned by partners Orr, Ives & Orr whose first names may well have begun with H, T and F.

The initials FTH could be the builder, Frank Turner. If the T is the largest letter, it could be his surname, with his given names either side. There is a mention of him in the following link.

The plaque does have F T H on it as you can see. The building that it is on does pre-date the Gaumont Palace / Odeon.

As far as I can tell from planning records Baz, the dance hall only ever occupied the first floor of the narrow strip which runs parallel to Whitefriars Street.

So the part with the F T H wasn't the Coliseum nor the Gaumont, so it couldn't have been built or owned by either, unless this part was saved from the Coliseum and built around, there used to be a joke shop underneath and around the corner by the electrical shop was a gas shop selling cookers in 72 as I bought my cooker from there when I first got married.

The Gaumont was added to the west side of the Coliseum in 1931. In the 1950s there was a proposal to massively extend the ballroom behind the Gaumont at first floor level where the car park was situated. The proposal was rejected by the council and the result was the Locarno being built instead.

Therefore if this be the case Adrian might be right about the builder as reading it again it states the builder didn't finish the building so the intial H could be the other builder who finished and because two different builders built it they put both initials.

That plan is for a much later rebuild Morgana. There are no planning records from before the war.

I wonder then could it be possible to find out what shops were underneath pre war and would any information be on their deeds about the building, could their deeds be traced.

As far as I can tell Morgana there were no shops on the Whitefriars Street side before the war. There were four units on that side in total. Two were cafes, one for the cinema and one for the ballroom. Two were entrances, one with staircase for the ballroom and one with a box office for the cinema front stalls. I'm surprised no-one here can remember whether the cafes, ballroom and Whitefriars Street box office were used again between the war and 1960? After 1960 the ballroom was converted to offices and the spaces below became shops.

My wife worked at the Odeon for 20 years from 1979 until it closed in October 1999. The managers my wife worked under were George Lockyer and Doris Hart. Mr Lockyer had his own flat in the building and raised his family there. He retired and had a farewell party in the old ballroom. I was a guest and can remember that party so well. The new manageress arrived from Darlington, Mrs Doris Hart. My daughter who had left uni then became one of her assistant managers and is now the manager of the Odeon cinema complex at the Skydome. The restaurant became a dance studio and subsequently screen no five. More to follow later.

Hi there Bernie, the ballroom might have been the restaurant area in the Odeon at the front above the main doors. Or was there another a ballroom area somewhere else? There is a link here to a YouTube video that shows the restaurant in all its glory and the Odeon screen / stage etc.