No big screens for miles around Chester

Street scene in Chester, not featuring a cinema. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Brian Baxter (Letters, 24 August) should quit moaning and consider himself lucky to have “20-plus screens within a five-mile radius” of his home.

Here in Chester, we have had precisely zero screens within a five-mile radius for the last five years (since the out-of-town multiplex closed) and have been without a city centre cinema for over 10 years. If the Cheshire Oaks Outlet Village (our nearest multiplex, six miles to the north) is not to your taste, there is Wrexham (13 miles south) or Mold (15 west), but if you’re going to shell out on public transport you might as well go to Liverpool, where there’s a decent arthouse cinema. We are getting a new arts centre at long last next year, but the fact that the council called it Storyhouse doesn’t exactly fill me with hope. Might be a hit with the under-10s, though…
Tim Barlow
Chester

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