Thread: Red Row shops
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Old 30-10-2018, 06:52 PM
borderlad borderlad is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: Newcastle
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Default Morpeth Herald November 1919 Red Row Picture Hall

Quote:
Originally Posted by Unicorn View Post
My Grandfather, John Kellett, lived in Red Row with his family until the early 1930s. He was a deputy overman and shotfirer at Broomhill Colliery. He was also a founding owner, in 1913, of the Red Row Electric Palace, which became the Red Row Picture Hall in 1923. His partners were John Bell and Thomas Gibson.
In 1914, despite being over-age and exempt from military service because he was a coal miner, he volunteered for the Army and in 1915 went to France with the 14th Batt. Northumberland Fusiliers. He was awarded the Military Medal, in recognition of which he was given an engraved gold pocket watch by the Broomhill and District Heroe's Fund. He was wounded and captured by the Germans in May 1918, spending the last seven months of the war in Gothenburg POW camp.
After the war he returned to Red Row and continued to operate the Picture Hall until 1931 when he sold his share in the business and moved the family to Chester-le-Street, where his son, my father George Kellett, started a building and contracting business.
In 1919 three lessees of the Electric Palace Theatre were fined £10 each when in breach of the loathsome Entertainment Tax Act of 1916 where a percentage of each ticket sold went in tax. This tax was finally abolished in 1960
Attached Images
File Type: jpg 1919 Nov (2).jpg (95.9 KB, 20 views)
File Type: jpg 1919 Nov 2.JPG Morpeth Herald (2).jpg (74.5 KB, 15 views)
File Type: jpg 1919 Nov 3 (2).JPG (137.2 KB, 17 views)
File Type: jpg Red Row Picture Hall.jpg (118.7 KB, 26 views)
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