Memories Gaumont, Odeon cinema and Sainsbury's construction

If you drive along Beechen Grove to or from the Town Hall roundabout, the town centre branch of Sainsbury’s is one of the bigger sites you’ll pass.

Although the supermarket’s address is Albert Road South, the access road to the store is named Gaumont Approach – an acknowledgement of part of the site's cinematic past.

• When music legends performed in Watford 60 years ago
• Recalling the supermarket beneath a nightclub by the pond
• The garage that made way for a popular cinema

The sign on the Odeon read 'Goodbye All' following its closure (Image: Bob Nunn Collection / Watford Museum)

The Gaumont cinema had opened in May 1937 and had around 2,000 seats.

Movies were to be shown there for the next 46 years and it also hosted some of the most famous names in music in the early 1960s.

The Gaumont c1953 (Image: Watford Museum)

The cinema was renamed the Odeon in 1964 but 19 years later plans were approved to incorporate the site into the new supermarket development. The Odeon closed on October 15, 1983.

A worker carrying a shovel over his shoulder on the site on February 8, 1984 (Image: Watford Observer)

Scroll down this page to take a look at how the cinema used to look, together with pictures from our archive as the new supermarket started to take shape throughout 1984.

Plenty of the building work was done by hand (Image: Watford Observer)

A view of the site from the road with the former Bailey's nightclub in the background (Image: Watford Observer)

The new supermarket was starting to take shape by August 1984 (Image: Watford Observer)

A view of the site from above the Ring Road in September 1984 (Image: Watford Observer)

A 40-year-old view that remains familiar today (Image: Watford Observer)