The cinema was built in the early 1930's by Mr Dobson and thrived for many years, but was closed down in the late 1960's (along with a lot of others in the area).

Brigadier Ponsonby bought the cinema from Mr Dobson in 1970 and renamed it 'The Playhouse'. The cinema was bought to enable Leyburn Amateur Dramatic Society (LADS - of which he was a member) to have a base. The Cinema equipment was disposed of and only the seats remained.

LADS put on a few theatrical shows a year and the building was not open as a commercial venture for 25 years. The building was bought from Brigadier Ponsonby in 1994 by Geoff and Jude Simpson who spent £170,000 refitting the building to meet the stringent HSE requirements for buildings used for public entertainment and bought cinema equipment back in again. The Simpsons remained the cinema The Elite and continued to let LADS put on their shows. They operated the Elite from 1994 to 2007.

In November 2007 Leyburn Art Centre Ltd, a registered charity, negotiated a long-term lease with the Simpsons to keep the cinema going and extend the venue’s offer into the broader areas of visual and performing arts.

Following a public search for a name to replace The Elite the name The Picture House was chosen to reflect the cinema heritage of the building and ambition to expand with exhibitions, performances and events across the arts.

The first cinema in Leyburn stood on the site of the garage and was a canvas and timber construction built to entertain the thousands of troops billeted in the Dale during the 1914-1918 world war.