THE PALACE Cinema in Alton will close in September next year unless somebody comes up with £850,000 to buy out its current owner.

Raj Jeyasingam, who has run the independent cinema in Normandy Street for 26 years, said: “I always looked at it as a paid hobby, but I have had enough and I want to finish with it. My main aim is to keep it open until the new six-screen one in Farnham opens.

“I’m not interested in selling the leasehold, I want to sell the freehold. This includes a two-screen cinema, a flat and a shop used as an office. The price is £850,000, non-negotiable.”

The cinema survived Covid-19 thanks to the government’s furlough scheme, with Mr Jeyasingam topping up staff wages. But furlough payments stopped when the cinema re-opened, and with audiences yet to return to pre-lockdown levels it is currently losing around £2,000 per month.

Mr Jeyasingam would be happy to sell the Palace to “anybody who wants to say they would be proud to have a cinema in Alton”, but he was keen to stress the reality of the situation to potential buyers.

He said: “All the new films are available to stream within days of release. My projectors are over ten years old and are no longer mechanically supported, so if something goes wrong tomorrow it will be very expensive.

“I will carry on until September 2022 unless the loss becomes uncontrollable or the projectors let me down. Either way, come September next year I don’t want to work seven days a week. We have films at 12.30pm, 2.30pm and 5pm on both screens. That’s six shows a day and I do everything

myself.”

The Palace Cinema opened as the Alton Picture Theatre on December 18, 1912, with 440 seats. Designed by Portsmouth architect Bates White, it had a semi-circular brick façade faced in Bath stone and two large dressing rooms.

Always independently operated, it was renamed the Palace Cinema around 1929 and was equipped for films with sound in March 1931, the first of them featuring John Boles in The Desert Song.

It was closed on February 8, 1937, for rebuilding by architect Robin A Thomas in Art Deco style. It reopened on June 18, 1937, with Poor Little Rich Girl starring Shirley Temple.

A balcony increased the capacity to 620.

The second screen, seating 60, opened in 2003 with Kylie Minogue in The Delinquents.