The Alhambra on North Street began as a music hall and became a picture house in 1902. Because it kept its music hall licence it worked under easier rules than other cinemas, and became known as a rough, rowdy and mainly male place, a sort of boys' club.
It was also said to be home to a persistent ghost. Reports held that the spirit of its founder, Willie John Ashcroft, lingered in the building. He had taken his own life after falling heavily into debt, and many believed his troubled spirit returned to the place he had put so much of his life into. Staff and patrons claimed to feel his presence over the years through strange noises, fleeting shadows and the sense of being watched from the upper gallery.
The reports are said to have continued until the cinema was demolished in 1959, after which they stopped.
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