Ritz Cinema

The Ritz Cinema, South Street, Ilkeston

This former cinema, designed in 1938 by Reginald William Gaze Cooper of Nottingham, is a striking example of 1930s modernist cinema architecture. The building employs a wedge-shaped plan and incorporates shop premises on its South Street facade.

The exterior displays moderne styling derived from contemporary Odeon cinemas and German examples of the 1920s. The principal material is brick, with contrasting glazed faience tile cladding surrounding the main entrance and a prominent tower feature. The roof is concealed from street view. The streamlined effect is achieved through exaggerated transoms above the entrance. A rounded glazed stair tower turns the corner to the left of the entrance, while a tower fin feature rises above the adjacent roofs on the right, with balancing rounded corners incorporating streamlined windows at ground and first floor levels. The upper part of the fin displays channelled brickwork. A canopy extends over the entrance and continues around the right-hand corner, though its profile has been altered. Above the ground-floor lock-up shop stands a false screen wall with an advertising display panel supported by four linear symmetrical concrete mouldings.

The interior contains an entrance foyer with three sets of original double doors leading to the auditorium. The long double-height auditorium narrows towards the stage end and features fibrous plaster decoration in streamlined moderne and Art Deco styles. The ante-proscenium splay walls carry three bands of elaborate Art Deco plasterwork separated by mouldings, which conceal ventilation extract ducts and extend back as streamlining derived from Erich Mendelsohn's Universum Cinema in Berlin (1928) to a false proscenium. The upper auditorium walls are decorated in staggered panels with Art Deco mouldings loosely based on Chinoiserie design found in Berlin theatres of the 1920s by Oscar Kaufmann. Above the ante-proscenium splay, the ceiling features radiating panels of Art Deco fibrous plasterwork. The remaining ceiling is treated as a descending sequence of coves with further fibrous plaster decoration. The balcony soffit has coved cornices for lighting and Art Deco style fibrous plaster panels. A notably spacious vomitory with streamlined handrails divides the balcony into entrance and exit routes, with two sets of original doors from the upper foyer. The original raked stalls floor has been replaced by two flat terraces for tables and fixed bench seating to accommodate bingo operations, and new suspended lighting fixtures have been installed. However, the original seating survives in the circle, and the original offices and projection suite remain intact.

Cooper is recognised as one of the most important provincial architects working in the cinema genre, and this building represents perhaps his finest surviving work. The cinema converted to a bingo hall in June 1968.