NESTLED away in the heart of Elland town centre, the Rex cinema has an interesting history.

When it opened as the Picture House on December 16, 1912, it was operated by Central Pictures (Elland) – a consortium of local businessmen.

The manager and pianist was Harry Taylor. Within a few years the company had taken over the Town Hall (later the Palladium) cinema in town, which had been showing films since 1909.

The two cinemas were managed by James Montgomery.

Cinemas proliferated across the country in those early golden days and it was not uncommon for a town the size of Elland to boast a couple of picture houses.

Indeed, at one time Huddersfield possessed around 60 with such areas as Birkby, Marsh, Moldgreen and Waterloo priding themselves on having their own cinemas.

Huddersfield town centre, itself, boasted several cinemas well into the 1970s – The Princess, the ABC, The Classic and a specialist cinema showing adult films.

The Central (the Rex) was to close in January 1959 due to competition from the growth of television and the frequent bus service to cinemas in nearby Halifax and Huddersfield.

The Palladium followed suit in June the same year.

The years from the late 1950s to the mid 80s proved to be years of flux.

Walker Cinemas of Huddersfield acquired the Central, carried out a refurbishment, and it reopened as the Rex in November, 1959.

By the 1960s commercial pressures were telling and the competing demands of the omnipresent bingo proved irresistible and after intruding for a couple of evenings in 1964 took over completely later in the year.

There were further changes in the ownership and a further trial of films occurred between November 1975 and August 1977.

But there was no escaping the bingo and it duly resumed. Eventually the enterprise folded in 1985.

In 1988 Charles Morris and Peter Berry took over The Rex, though the later has now departed.

Now, Mr Morris is preparing to introduce a digital service – a service which he says has been forced upon the industry but from which there is no escape.

It is all a long way from those fascinating early days in the mid 1890s when the Lumière Brothers, Auguste and Louis, directed and produced one of the very first films lasting all of 50 seconds – The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station.

Its first public showing took place in January 1896 and an urban myth has been perpetuated in which the audience was so overcome by the moving image of a life-sized locomotive coming directly at them that people panicked and ran to the back of the room.

The golden age of cinema was born and chilling horror movies were just a few decades away.