The history of the moving image began here. Or at least his was the site of the first picture houses, in my home country. They landed here as it was teh location of a collision of two worlds - Vaudeville and the art of lense grinding for microscopes or telescopes. The first cinema required both.
Page type: history
51.520190, -0.108530 Clerkenwell / Hatton Garden Optics Hub — historic centre for spectacle and optical instrument trade (1700s–1900s) - spectaclemakers.com 
51.516700, -0.139800 Kinetoscope Parlour (London’s first coin-in-slot film venue), 70 Oxford Street — opened 17 Oct 1894 (Maguire & Baucus) - victorian-cinema.net
51.563370, -0.118450 Electric Pavilion (early purpose-built cinema), 643 Holloway Road — opened 1910 (architect Israel Davis) - arthurlloyd.co.uk
51.564890, -0.106750 Finsbury Park Empire (Moss Empires music hall), St Thomas’s Rd & Prah Rd — opened 5 Sep 1910; vaudeville theatre showing occasional films - arthurlloyd.co.uk
51.565134, -0.104578 Pyke’s Cinematograph Theatre (Islington’s first purpose-built cinema), 269 Seven Sisters Rd — opened 2 Oct 1909 (Montagu(e) Pyke) - historicengland.org.uk
51.565830, -0.106520 Rink Cinema / Finsbury Park Cinema (later combined with Pyke’s), 10 Stroud Green Rd — c.1913; merged 1920; later Rowans bowling - cinematreasures.org
51.567944, -0.109494 Scala Cinema (Stroud Green), 9–15 Stroud Green Rd — 1914–1924, 700 seats (H.W. Horsley) - cinematreasures.org
51.576520, -0.097720 Salisbury Electric Picture Hall (early cinema, probable), 527 Green Lanes, Harringay — Easter 1909 - harringayonline.com
51.532130, -0.090710 Islington / Gainsborough Studios (Poole Street) — opened 1919 (Famous Players-Lasky, later Gainsborough Pictures; Hitchcock, Balcon) - historicengland.org.uk
51.589960, -0.147180 Robert W. Paul’s Film Factory & Studio (Britain’s first film studio), Sydney Road, Muswell Hill — 1898 - thecinetourist.net
SEARCH
Finsbury Park Cinemas