THESE photos of the North Yorkshire county town of Northallerton are from the collection of George Barker, the oldest member of Northallerton Camera Club.

George has more than 1,000 images, and on Thursday he is putting on a presentation entitled Old Northallerton in Bygone Days.

It will show pictures from throughout the town’s history, and it will encourage discussion – and provoke memories – about the scenes on display.

The event is in Brompton Methodist Church Hall. It starts at 7.30pm, with tickets £4 on the door in aid of the hall’s kitchen refurbishment fund.

This also gives us the chance for a little update on the amazing Northallerton Rialto Mandolin Band picture that we published before Christmas.

The Northern Echo:

TOWN HALL: This picture shows a splendid view looking north up Northallerton High Street in, we guess, the 1890s. The distinctive town hall was built in 1873 by Darlington architect John Ross who was also responsible for the remarkable Alexandra Hotel and Britannia Terrace which hog the clifftop at Saltburn.

The Northern Echo: LOST CINEMA: Today, a road runs through the Central Cinema at the north end of the High Street taking drivers to the Applegarth Car Park. The Central opened in December 1920, built by Darlington’s Blackett Bros, and had one screen and about 400 seats. I

The Northern Echo: Northallerton High Street today - it's amazing to think that you could fit a cinema in that gap

LOST CINEMA: Today, a road runs through the Central Cinema (pictured top) at the north end of the High Street taking drivers to the Applegarth Car Park.

The Central opened in December 1920, built by Darlington’s Blackett Bros, and had one screen and about 400 seats.

It closed in 1962 and was almost immediately demolished for the road. In the golden age of the silver screen, Northallerton had two other cinemas: Cinema de Luxe behind the post office in Romanby Road (1913 to the late 1950s), and the rounded Lyric in the High Street (1939 to 1995, and now a Baptist church).

The bottom picture is the north end of Northallerton High Street today, only with the Central Cinema missing.

The Northern Echo: Northallerton Rialto Mandolin Band, featuring Great Aunt May, in 1906

MAKING MUSIC: Shortly before Christmas, we published this magnificent picture of the Northallerton Rialto Mandolin Band of 1906 which was sent in by Tony Marshall of Darlington.

His great aunt, Mabel Hallimond, in the darker hat, second from the right, in the middle row. Sheila Oldfield recognised Mabel as her grandmother.

"She met her husband, Robert, during the First World as she was a Red Cross nurse and he came back wounded from Ypres," she says, "and they married in November 1917."

They lived on the green at Ainderby Steeple. But we’re still no closer to understanding what the Rialto Mandolin Band was.

The picture was taken in the golden age of mandolin, from the late 1890s to the First World War, when the instrument was extremely fashionable and popular.

The dawning of the jazz age killed it off.

We presumed that the Rialto was a cinema, but we can’t see that Northallerton ever had a Rialto among its three picturehouses. Any more thoughts, please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk

The Northern Echo: AERIAL VIEW: The railway line at the bottom of the picture runs left to the north, so this is a triangle of land between Romanby Road and Malpas Road which was dominated by the the Northallerton Brattice Cloth, Tarpaulin and Linoleum Factory. It was start

AERIAL VIEW: The railway line at the bottom of the picture runs left to the north, so this is a triangle of land between Romanby Road and Malpas Road which was dominated by the the Northallerton Brattice Cloth, Tarpaulin and Linoleum Factory.

It was started in the 1860s by the town’s MP, Sir George Elliott, and was taken on in 1912 by Miles Sykes who diversified into linoleum. As well as making horse cloths he found a new market with car covers, and by the 1920s, the factory employed more than 200 people – it was Northallerton’s biggest employer.

Sykes went bust in 1939 with all hands made redundant.

After the war, Helix Springs, which made the bouncy bits for mattresses, took the factory over.

It was finally demolished in 1999 and now Weavers Court is on its site.