Mecca Bingo

Built in 1930 by George Coles as the Carlton Cinema, the building now serves as a bingo hall. The facade to Essex Road is designed in an Egyptian style, while the interior showcases a neo-Classical style incorporating occasional Egyptian motifs. The exterior is constructed from black, white, and coloured faience on the Essex Road front, with the remainder of the building in yellow brick, and a slate roof. The design includes a plinth of black faience, with the remaining wall surfaces to Essex Road in white faience. A broad, central entrance features seven pairs of doors with bevelled glazing, and a canopy, possibly original, though currently partially obscured. Projecting wings, resembling pylons, flank the central entrance, featuring a hollow and roll cornice and a central window with sloping sides and an architrave of yellow faience. A frieze of stylised lotus flowers and pyramid patterns, rendered in coloured faience, runs across the wings above the ground floor, and over the central, higher section, punctuated by two massive columns with bud capitals. There is a five-window range within the lower part of the recess and five blank windows above, thought to be alterations. The interior entrance hall features pilasters with neo-Classical ornamental panels, an anthemion frieze, a dentil cornice, and a coffered ceiling. The crush hall displays pilasters, engaged columns with palm-leaf capitals, and neo-Classical plasterwork to the ceiling. The two-tier auditorium has undergone alterations for bingo use, but the original wall decoration remains at the front of the auditorium in the form of a plinth, rusticated base, a three-bay balustraded arcade of Corinthian columns, a frieze of scrolling ornament and modillion cornice, broad rusticated piers with urns in niches, a coved ceiling with ventilation grilles and bands of bayleaf and guilloche ornament, and a shallow dome. The proscenium arch has a broad band of scrolling ornament and a false curtain. Further ornamental details, including a vaulted arcade and lyre patterns in panels, adorn the gallery front of the upper tier.