The New Empire Theatre, located in Southend, was built on the site of a former pubic hall in 1896. The original hall which was owned by Frederick Marlow, a theatre impresario, was converted into The Empire Theatre in 1892 and it operated successfully up until Boxing Day 1895 when it was devastated by a fire. After the incident Marlow endeavoured to construct a much larger venue with electric lighting; this was to be The New Empire Theatre.

 

Unfortunately, however, Marlow only remained at the theatre until 1905, when it was purchased by the Southend-on-Sea Theatre Company Ltd. By 1919 the advent of filmography (motion pictures) brought about many changes to Southend, forcing the theatre to close its doors for a short period while it was redeveloped and enlarged into a cinema – The Rivoli.The cinema managed to operate under ABC for a further 20 years and, in 1982, even succeeded in creating a second smaller screen room at the old Rivoli Mezzanine level. By 1998, though, business had diminished considerably, and the popularity of the cinema had declined. The last film was screened in February 1998, and afterwards the venue was declared closed. The cinema was used periodically after its closure, but its doors were permanently closed in 2002 when the owners fell into financial difficulty. 

 

 

The Explore: 

We were driving around bored one night in southend, but nobody wanted to go home, so I suggested we look for somewhhere to explore, sure enough I find this place lurking about on the web, so we headed over to this site to check it out. Puzzled at first as to how we would go about getting in, since both sides are on roads. (Luckily it was late at night but there were still people walking around, the front doors were a definate no-go) So we walk round the back and see a hole in the fence, slid through when nobody was around to see up, and dusted all the bird goop off of ourselves. 

 

Once in, we realised we had to go into the underground to get up into the actual screening rooms and stumbled across what looked like an underground bar/communial area. (looked like it would have been pretty cosy down there back in the day). Walked our way through the bar and ended up at the main doors with the consession stands. Evrything seems to have been vandalised which is a let down because it would have been nice to see this place left with some sort of glory.

 

Next stop was the screening rooms, pretty much stripped bare, chairs were still there minus the odd few that vandals have ripped out here and there, with an old piano left up on stage.