YOU will know of the Pavilion, the Winter Gardens, the ABC and Odeon.

But does your memory go back as far as the days when Bournemouth had a Theatre Royal, the Palace Court Theatre, Springbourne’s Roxy cinema or Westbourne’s Grand?

Hugh Ashley has brought together information on just about every cinema and live entertainment venue Bournemouth has ever had. The result is Bournemouth Entertains, a short book which begins in 1840 and goes up to the present day.

Hugh, whose father was the legendary Echo chief photographer Harry Ashley, can claim to have worked in almost all the sizeable live entertainment venues in the town.

“When I was a kid, my parents took me to the cinema and theatre every week, always in Bournemouth, so I grew to like and understand it,” he said.

“In the end, I became more interested in the technical side of things. I loved watching the projection booth in the cinema.”

The book notes that Bournemouth had no dedicated entertainment venues at all at the start of the 19th century, when the meeting rooms of the Belle Vue Hotel – on the site of the current Pavilion – hosted performances instead.

The town’s first theatre was the Shelley Theatre, opened by Percy Florence Shelley, son of the poet, in 1865, partly as a venue for presenting his own plays. It closed to the public in 1890 – and did not re-open until 2010.

Theatre came to Bournemouth town centre in 1882 when the Theatre Royal opened, spanning all the way from Yelverton Road to Albert Road, behind the space where the Daily Echo HQ was later built.

In its second life as the New Theatre Royal, it is the venue for which Hugh feels the most affection. He was able to get a job there as a 15-year-old during his summer holiday from Bournemouth School.

Will Hammer – the stage name of Will Hinds, who had founded Hammer Films and WH Hinds jewellers – had opened the New Theatre Royal in 1949 with band leader Jack Payne. Hugh saw the Goons there, as well as Billy Cotton, Tessie O’Shea and more, while queues for Frankie Howerd tickets ran all the way down Richmond Hill.

But Hammer was keeping the loss-making theatre alive as a hobby and it closed after he died in 1957.

The building is now a Genting Casino and retains the theatre’s circle as a balcony restaurant, as Hugh discovered when he returned to take a picture for the book.

“They were very helpful and welcoming in there. I hadn’t been in that theatre for more than 50 years,” he said.

Another important variety theatre was Boscombe’s Hippodrome, which dates from 1882.

“The stage wasn’t very big, the dressing rooms were very small, but they had pantomimes and circuses there,” said Hugh.

Local folklore has it that there were tunnels through which dangerous circus animals were transported between the Hippodrome and Kings Park.

“It was the first theatre in town to have nude shows,” Hugh adds.

“There were very strange laws in the 1930s. The girls could appear completely naked but only if they weren’t moving and only for about three seconds and then the lights would black out.”

Among the famous names to play the Hippodrome were Laurel and Hardy in 1947 and Morecambe and Wise in 1951. It closed in 1957 and became the Royal Ballrooms, the disco Tiffany’s and the clubs the Academy and the Opera House before reopening as the O2 Academy Bournemouth.

The arrival of Bournemouth’s Pavilion in March 1929 was a huge event for the town. It was the first complex of its kind in England, with the Daily Telegraph noting that “it presents a seemliness and dignity which Bournemouth will observe with quiet satisfaction and other seaside towns will show secret envy”.

Hugh worked at the Pavilion, was its archivist and has published a previous book on it.

Hugh’s latest book also takes in the town’s two Winter Gardens buildings, the Palace Court Theatre (later the Playhouse) on Hinton Road, and the live entertainment at the Westover Ice Rink and Pier Approach Baths, among others.

And it chronicles Bournemouth’s cinemas, from the early days of films in the 1890s. Hugh found out much more about the Westover Palace, which stood where the Brasshouse is today, and which showed films from 1910 to 1937 – often with roller skating in the intervals. It later became a ballroom, closing as a cinema when the Westover Super Cinema – now the ABC – opened next door. Meanwhile the Regent had opened further up the road in 1929, later becoming the Gaumont and the Odeon.

Hugh also recalls a long list of smaller cinemas in the town and its suburbs. At one point, he says, the Echo listings pages included no fewer than 19 of them.

“They were plush cinemas and when you went into them you went for an evening of high class entertainment,” he says of the big venues.

“Now, you go into a black box with a big screen on the wall with no curtains.”

* Bournemouth Entertains by Hugh Ashley is available from Westbourne Bookshop and Gullivers at Wimborne.