THE curtain will rise today on a new exhibition featuring the history and traditions of entertainment in South Cumbria.

Display boards on the theatres and cinemas of Barrow, Dalton and Ulverston are due to go on show at the Barrow Archive and Local Studies Library, within the Ramsden Street Central Library in Barrow.

The display can be seen until the end of the year.

On Monday, November 6, between 1pm and 4pm the archive centre will be hosting a drop-in session on theatres, cinemas and local amateur dramatic and musical groups.

Graham Whalan, author of a book on musical theatre called A Sound of Musicals, will be at the event is putting together a DVD of images to music.

Barrow archivist Susan Benson: “We may record people’s memories and we will have archives out for people to look at.”

Some of the earliest material to feature in the displays is from late 18 th century traveling groups of performers who used makeshift buildings behind inns, such as the White Hart, on Daltongate, Ulverston.

It is noted: “In 1796 a purpose-built theatre and assembly rooms were planned and built in Theatre Street, Ulverston.”

It was known as the Theatre Royal and had its own museum.

The theatre soon had several rivals and they competed for custom by producing handbills of the latest shows and acts.

It wasn’t always top-notch entertainment.

A diary entry from 1812 recorded a night at the Theatre Royal: “More wretched a performance I have seldom witnessed.”

Later Ulverston places of entertainment included the Palladium, in Victoria Road, which was built in 1922 and the Roxy, at Brogden Street, which opened in 1937.

Dalton’a Roxy, in Market Street, was built in 1912 as the Empire cinema.

In later times it was a bingo hall and was then demolished to make room for the Co-op supermarket to be built in 1998.

The cinemas of Barrow feature strongly in the exhibition, with pictures and details on many of the buildings which have long-since gone or been converted for other uses.

They include the Osbourne, on Michaelson Road, Barrow Island; the Regal, on Forshaw Street and Walney’s theatre and cinema on Natal Road.

The displays can be seen during normal library opening hours.