Clifton Cinema

Former cinema, constructed 1937-8 for Clifton Cinema (Great Barr) Ltd, to the designs of Ernest S Roberts of Birmingham. The building is constructed of brick with a steel frame.

Exterior

The building stands on a low plinth approached by sets of wide steps and presents a powerful Moderne facade facing Walsall Road. The frontage is of fine quality facing bricks and is terminated at each end by two fortress-like D-shaped towers containing emergency stairs. A single-storey entrance front breaks forward as a broad convex bay, with the recessed main wall of the building having five regularly spaced vertical windows. Above is the cinema name in original sans serif letters. A straight plaster cornice runs over the central block and channelled brickwork marks the tops of the towers. Five sets of entrance doors are grouped in the middle of the single-storey frontage, flanked on each side by four film advertising poster frames. Above these are bands of vertically laid bricks of rounded profile. The facing bricks continue on the right return wall, where the long auditorium facade is enlivened with giant brickwork panels. There are few windows on the flanks, all small, serving offices or lavatories – three on the return face of the left tower and six in the right-hand street front. The rear elevation expresses the stage and the film sound horn chamber, with a chimney for the heating plant. A single storey extension at the rear has an emergency exit door and six blocked windows. The left return wall is largely hidden behind adjacent buildings and is treated more functionally, revealing an emergency exit stairway and the vertical steel structural members. The roof is not visible.

Interior

The large double-height auditorium is approached through a wide but shallow outer lobby in the single-storey frontage, then by an inner foyer with a ceiling having Moderne style mouldings. To the right of the inner foyer, a dog-leg stair with elaborate Moderne balustrades ascends to the balcony foyer. This foyer is extended under the balcony, where a door leads through to the vomitory, from which part of the balcony rakers can be observed. The auditorium is simply decorated with a balcony at the entrance end opposite a proscenium framed by two ante-prosceniums, the inner of which is enlivened with banded mouldings. The balcony front mouldings are based on the cyma recta and reversa. Five arched-top niches in protruding frames are set high up on the side walls. Modern-style moulded horizontal ventilator grilles are in the ceiling. The stage is shallow. On the left ante-proscenium wall is a rare, possibly unique ventilation indicator with a clock face inscribed with the characters FANWORKING instead of numbers.

The Clifton, Great Barr, formed part of the Clifton circuit of cinemas based in the West Midlands and run by Cinema Accessories Ltd. It became a bingo club around 1980. Roberts was the company's in-house architect and a major regional figure in cinema design; little else of his work survives, save for the listed Regal at Wells, also designed for the Clifton circuit. This is a good example of a 1930s neighbourhood super cinema, making a memorable statement on the arterial road it faces in its suburban location. The main facade displays particularly fine brickwork in the tradition of the Arts and Crafts movement, while the interior remains relatively unaltered with interesting surviving features such as the Moderne metal stair balustrades and the distinctive clock face in the auditorium.