LOOKING Back's glimpse a fortnight ago at the old canal-sideVictoria Cinema in Blackburn, which shut in 1960 when its roof collapsed and a 270ft-deep hole was found under its cellar, brought picture-going memories reeling back for East Lancs exile in America, Ken Brooks.

In particular, 73-year-old Ken, of North Carolina, recalls dashing as a youngster from his home in Bastwell to spend every afternoon at the "tuppenny rush" at the old Star Cinema in Little Harwood.

But he also remembers going on one occasion to the Alexandra which also stood on the canal bank, but was in Dock Street on the opposite side of Eanam from the Victoria -- which was its progenitor.

"The Alexandra was also known as 'Penks' and I remember sitting on forms there in a riotous atmosphere," Ken says.

"Many years later, I was told that the Alexandra Hall was the first building in Britain that was purpose-built to show moving pictures as all other cinemas up until then had been converted from meeting halls, skating rinks, theatres, etc.

I don't know where I got the information from, but if it's true it is certainly worth mentioning in Blackburn's history."

No doubt, Ken and many others got the impression from the Alexandra's own advertisements -- like this from 1947 -- which for decades clearly stated it was 'The first picture house in the world'.

But it was a spurious boast. For though it was claimed that the Alexandra -- seen here in 1969, seven years after switching to bingo -- opened on Easter Tuesday in 1906, which might well have given it a place in cinema history, it did not open until 1909. And, by then, Britain's first purpose-built cinema -- Colne's Central Hall -- had been in business for going on for a couple of years, though it was to last as a picture house only until 1922.

How did the Alexandra come by its claim? One theory, suggested by Blackburn cinema historian Robin Whalley, who kindly lent the picture, is that the myth may have stemmed from a printing error in which the final '9' of its actual 1909 opening date was turned upside down to become a '6'.

And a cinema trade magazine journalist who visited Blackburn in 1947 to investigate the claim found the only evidence backing it up was an "old newspaper cutting about a Mayor of Bath who told the Mayor of New Orleans in a lecture in America that he knew that the Blackburn cinema was the world's oldest."

But whatever its true age, the Alexandra cinema did not go back to 1906, for council rate books for two years later show that the site still occupied by stables belonging to pork butcher John Yates. It was in Novemb

er that year -- 1908 -- that Yates applied for permission to build a hall there that would be 'used exclusively for cinematograph entertainments.' His bid for a licence was opposed by the proprietors of three of Blackburn's cinemas -- on the grounds that there was already sufficient provision for that type of entertainment in the borough.

But, of behalf of Yates' intended tenant, Frederick Walter Pendleton, who had been showing films nightly across the road at the Victoria Hall from the previous March, it was stated that this was far from the case. For the licensing magistrates were told that the Victoria was filled to capacity every night and often 200 or 300 people had to be turned away.

And so the application was granted.

It was a corruption of Pendleton's name that gave the Alexandra the nickname 'Penks' that Ken remembers.

Curiously, the Alexandra's claim to be the world's first was dropped from its advertisements in 1954 after it underwent a big renovation. Instead, it described itself as 'Blackburn's newest super cinema.'

It stopped showing films in 1962 to become a bingo hall and then, in 1980, a bed retailers until 1993 and ended up being pulled down in 1998 after it was wrecked by fire.