Majestic Cinema

The Majestic Cinema stands on the northwest side of Tower Street in King's Lynn, incorporating nos. 1 and 2 Sedgeford Lane. Built in 1927 by King's Lynn architects John Laurie Carnell and William Dymoke White for East Anglia Entertainments Limited, it is constructed of brick with reconstituted stone dressings. The building occupies a curved corner site with a complex plan featuring a double-height foyer and former bathroom to the front. The original auditorium with balcony has been subdivided into two separate cinemas.

The exterior presents an asymmetrical facade to Tower Street, freely treated in Jacobean and Baroque style. The composition comprises a prominent tower to the left, a two-storey three-bay central section, and a four-bay wing to the right. The tower rises in three stages: the ground floor and mezzanine levels contain emergency exit doors beneath a triple-light window surmounted by a segmental pediment; the first floor features a tall window of six lights divided by mullions and transoms, set under a Jacobean style strap-work pediment with shell motif; the uppermost stage, rising above the cinema roof and separated by a broad string-course, displays a clock face with Roman numerals beneath a Baroque modillioned central pediment. Clock faces and corresponding pediments are repeated on both return walls, with a modillioned cornice at the rear only. The tower is capped by an ogee copper cap with ball finial, and its angles are chamfered to form concave pilasters.

The central three-bay section is divided into two orders by an entablature with modillioned cornice and pulvinated frieze. The lower order consists of an arched loggia divided by Ionic pilasters, each arch bearing triple mouldings to the extrados and cartouche keystones. The upper order displays Corinthian pilasters and nine-light mullioned and transomed windows with brick border panels and aprons below a string course. Above sits a further modillioned entablature and parapet.

The four-bay wing to the right accommodates a contemporary shopfront at ground level with dentil cornice beneath fascia, a mezzanine floor with twin leaded-light windows under shouldered hood moulds, and mullioned and transomed four-light windows on the first floor, some blind and others leaded. A cornice and tiled mansard roof complete this section. A single-storey gabled extension adjoins beyond. The side and rear elevations feature auditorium windows with sliding shutters and a scene-dock door from the stage.

Five steps lead up to the entrance loggia, paved in black and white terrazzo with the name "Majestic" set into the central panel, each panel edged with Greek fret design. The rear wall functions as a glazed screen with four sets of double entrance doors recessed within deep reveals and filled to three-quarter depth with twelve lights of clear glass, surrounded by mullioned and transomed leaded windows containing panels of stained glazing with armorial crests and devices. The central panel of the far left section bears the construction date 1928. The loggia has a plain plaster ceiling with moulded cornice and retains original door handles.

The interior comprises a rectangular galleried double-height foyer with sides supported on Tuscan columns and rear wall with Tuscan pilasters. The right-hand gallery, deeper than the left, formerly functioned as a tea room with a kitchen beyond. Five bays of the foyer rear wall gallery form a solid Jacobean-style panelled screen, with the central bay breaking forward as an oriel filled with leaded and partly stained glazing. Gallery balusters and fielded plaster ceiling follow a subdued Jacobean taste. The floor is black and white terrazzo divided into three panels and edged with Greek fret pattern. Beyond the foyer, two sets of stairs with elaborate wrought metal balustrades and checkerboard-patterned steps serve the foyer galleries, auditorium balcony, and former ballroom.

The auditorium has been horizontally divided to create two cinemas, though most decorative embellishment survives. The lower cinema retains the lower portion of the proscenium arch with Corinthian pilasters, whose plinth remains visible, along with the original iron supporting columns for the balcony, its simplified curving front, and soffit of elaborately moulded plasterwork. The upper cinema is entered via side vomitoria with panelled doors and preserves the balcony steppings, Corinthian pilasters on sidewalls, the upper proscenium half, a modillioned cornice, and a deep ceiling cove on three sides with plaster divisions in strap-work style, together with a central saucer dome surrounded by strapwork.

A third cinema has been created from the former ballroom on the first floor above the foyer. Local press records from the time of construction state that this room incorporates architectural salvage from the demolished Empire Theatre in Leicester Square, City of Westminster, taken during the Majestic's construction. Much of this reused material remains in situ: pilasters with composite capitals incorporating spread eagles and two columns with similar capitals, the latter originally forming an aisle now partitioned off. The projection room is a conversion of a shallow balcony, whose front survives decorated with plaster strap-work including a cartouche containing the date 1928. An exit to the left of the screen provides stairs ascending to the rear of the main auditorium and descending to the base of the tower.

The Majestic represents an elaborate cinema complex from the late 1920s with extensive surviving internal decoration, particularly fine foyer spaces, and an unaltered exterior. It demonstrates how a wide-ranging local commercial architectural practice could be effectively employed in specialist cinema design, and exemplifies how the rare surviving cinemas of this period, especially those in market towns, contributed civic prestige to entertainment architecture.