When the Royal Military Academy first moved to Surrey in 1812, the area it settled in was mainly undeveloped and had no official name.

New Town was built to accommodate servants and workers from the Academy, and was renamed Cambridge Town.

Yorktown was a separate development. It was built further down the London Road, towards Blackwater.

By the 1870's the two areas had merged and became known as Camberley.

Camberley High Street was not the busy street it is now, but it was home to the first in a succession of four, town cinemas. This was called the Electric.

In 1914, Mr George Doman, a local business man decided to open a second cinema in the town, in the area that is still known as Yorktown by some residents.

He called it the Academy and it was situated on the London Road (A30) between the Duke of York Hotel and Victoria Avenue.

Camberley High Street, site of the first of the town's four cinemas.

The cinema proved to be a great success, showing a series of silent films to the paying public.

Spurred on by the success of the Academy, George Doman went into partnership with his brother-in-law H.W.Fairs and they opened
another cinema in Camberley town centre.

This, the Arcade, was built opposite the RMA Staff College gates. These gates are still in use, opposite the entrance to Park Street and the cinema would have been close to the site which now houses the Staff public house.

The Arcade charged admission prices of 1/10d or 1/6d for balcony seats and 1/- or 9d for accompanied children.

There were three changes of film a week.

The local newspaper, Camberley News reported in January 1930 that the cinema held the first public tryout of talking films.

The cinema had it's own orchestra, who played the musical accompaniment to the silent films.

"On Trial" was the first film and by the end of March all the Arcade's films were "talkies". The Arcade orchestra were no longer needed.

The success and novelty of the Arcade and it's talking pictures hit the Academy business hard and it soon closed down.

However, in November,
the newly refurbished Academy opened again, showing only silent films, and employing the formerly redundant Arcade orchestra.

On the 27th August 1932, the Arcade acquired another rival.

In the 1800's, a Mr Joseph Graves had been awarded land under the 1801 Frimley Enclosure Act. He built a series of small houses on the land and one large house - Osnaburgh House.

Robins cinema, formerly the Regal, opened August 1932

The house sited in what was to become Yorktown, and upon completion was originally bought, by a Colonel B.M. Dawes.

This house was demolished in the early 1900's and it was on the Osnaburgh site that the Regal Cinema was built
in the popular Art Deco style.

This cinema was opened when the Chairman of the Urban Council, a Mr Butterworth, declared it open.

He said the building "has proved a distinct acquisition to a portion of London Road that previously presented a not too attractive appearance."

The films shown on opening night were Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge in "Jack's The Boy" and Laurel and Hardy in "One Good Turn".

Over the next 71 years the other cinemas closed and were pulled down to make way for new buildings as Camberley grew.

But the Regal, remained, a proud example of 1930's municipal architecture. It's name changed over the years as various organisations took over it's management.

It has been the Odeon, the Cannon and finally Robins. The cinema is as popular with the Camberley population now, in 2003, as it was in it's heyday.

Its only downfall is to be situated on a site that is now looked upon as prime development land.

On the 15th May 2003, the Regal, Camberley's last remaining original cinema, will draw it's screen curtains for the last time.

And one more piece of Camberley's fast dwindling historical architecture will be swept away by the bulldozers and seemingly uncaring planners.

For information about the closure of the cinema, read Lights go down on Robins for last time.

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