Vue Preston: the multiplex cinema in the city centre

The most looked-up venue in the whole Preston directory, and the one closest to the station.

Vue Preston is a multiplex cinema in the city centre, in the retail and leisure block off the Fishergate shopping area. Of Preston's cinemas it is the most central and the easiest to reach on foot from the railway station.

It is the single most searched entry in this directory, which says something about what people actually want from a city guide: not heritage, but where the cinema is. The district has four cinemas in total — this one, the Odeon, The Flower Bowl at Barton, north of Preston, and the independent Palace at Longridge — and only the first two are city centre venues.

Vue Cinema Preston sits inside the city-centre block, which is what separates it from the out-of-centre screens: it is the one a rail arrival can reach on foot.

For arrival, parking covers the city centre multi-storeys, all of which are within a few minutes of it.

Where the cinemas are, and why

A city-centre screen is the one format in this category that does not need its own car park, and that is the whole of its advantage here. The block it sits in was built to hold retail, food and leisure together, so the cinema borrows footfall that came for something else — which is why a multiplex will pay centre rent at all. It also means the trade is tied to the centre's own hours: when the shops shut and the evening trade is as thin as Preston's, the cinema is carrying that stretch of the day almost alone.

This is the central one. That position is worth something specific in Preston: the commercial centre is compact enough that a film can be attached to an afternoon in the markets or an hour in the Harris without moving the car, which is not true of the out-of-town venues in this category.

Getting there

A central cinema is the one entry in the activities category that works without a car. Preston railway station is a walk of a few minutes across the centre, and the bus station — the Grade II listed building whose fins are worth the detour on their own — is closer still.

What is nearby

A central position puts a whole afternoon within a few hundred metres: the markets and the covered trading ground, Miller Arcade, the Flag Market and the Harris. On a wet day that concentration is the most useful thing about the centre.

South of the shopping streets the ground falls through Winckley Square into the Victorian parks, which is the best walk in the city and starts five minutes away.