Gala Bingo Club

This former cinema was built in 1930-31 for Bernstein Theatres as the Granada. The architect was Cecil Masey (1881-1960), with interior design by Theodore Komisarjevsky (1882-1954). The building has a rendered frontage, with the rear left return wall and auditorium constructed in stock brick over a steel frame. The auditorium extends over an adjoining carriageway. The large auditorium is positioned at right-angles to the street and includes a balcony and stage. The distinctive plan features a double-height foyer and an inner staircase hall leading to a 'hall of mirrors' that serves the balcony.

Exterior

The symmetrical facade is clad in faience in an Italianate style. A central section rises higher than the flanking wings. The main entrance is centrally positioned, approached by three steps, and sheltered by a cantilevered canopy that extends along the full width of the building and continues down the left return. Above the entrance is a tetrastyle portico in antis with giant Corinthian columns and matching return pilasters. The rear wall of the portico contains three tall windows at first floor level, with three smaller square windows above. The first floor windows have metal glazing bars, while the second floor windows have honeycomb grills. A full entablature crowns the portico, above which is a space for the cinema name, followed by a cornice and an attic storey with nine small square apertures. The corner panels have borders of arabesques on a blue ground. A low pyramidal pantile roof completes the composition.

The wings feature fielded panels rising the full height of the portico and entablature. The left return is similarly treated but employs pilasters instead of a portico and includes a narrow aperture containing metal panels and grills. The right return is partially obscured by an adjacent building. Various exit doors and windows serve stairs, offices and lavatories.

Interior: Outer Lobby and Main Foyer

Five sets of double-doors lead into an outer lobby decorated in a quasi-Medieval style that incorporates both round-headed arches and Gothic elements. The side walls are arranged in three bays separated by paired spiral colonnettes standing on plinths decorated with lozenge motifs. The interspersing dado features quatrefoils. On the left side of each bay is a pier glass, while on the right is a ticket hatch. This arrangement is surmounted by a frieze incorporating quatrefoils over pairs of colonnettes and blind arches ornamented with cusping and foliage decoration. The ceiling is coffered with low pendants at the intersections and cusping on the beams. Glazed web-like ceiling light-fixtures provide illumination.

Five sets of double doors, separated by more lozenge plinths and spiral colonnettes surmounted by similar cusped and foliage arches, admit to the main double-height foyer, again in quasi-Medieval style. On the inner side, the entrance doors are separated by the same decoration. Above each pair of doors are a series of superimposed Gothic arches (the outermost cusped), surmounted by gables enriched with foliage and enclosing spiral roundels, divided by small trefoil niches.

The foyer is five bays long, with the central bay wider than the others to accommodate two lancet windows rather than one. Each bay is defined by a pilaster decorated with stiff-leaf foliage, with capitals featuring animals playing lutes and similar motifs. Above are unadorned round-headed relieving arches. Each lancet (except the one over the cafe gallery stairs) has a shaped apron containing an up-lighter. The ceiling rises into a central attic whose clerestory is decorated with grisailles of leaping animals drawn in naive medieval style, and false Gothic windows with imitation leading.

At the far end of the hall, twin flights of stairs in Travertine rise to quarter-turn landings and then continue up to a balcony. The attic is terminated at each end by broad depressed three-centred arches which turn upwards to become ogees. The undersides of these broad flat arches are cusped. Under the inner end arch is a flat arch creating a tympanum with painted scroll-work decoration. Above the main arches is an area of fluted panelling. The ceiling is decorated with connected roundels and trefoils. The former cafe is decorated with Gothic grills. A large Gothic chandelier hangs in the centre of the foyer with smaller ones distributed elsewhere in the foyer and in the cafe. Two gilded wooden settees furnish the space, along with a fine inlaid-oak and wrought-iron side table. Lighting standards in scrolling wrought-iron have triangular tops to support 'electric candles'. The foyer is currently carpeted but was originally floored with Travertine.

Interior: Inner Foyers

At stalls level, a wide aperture leads through, past scagliola columns and up three Travertine steps (with short handrails supported by wrought-iron balustrades), to an inner foyer lined with mirrors divided by attached half-columns. These are flanked by vertical panels of zig-zag cusping and dog-tooth over reeding. Entrance to the auditorium is by way of doors in the far left and right facing corners.

At balcony level the arrangement is identical except that the left hand doors lead first through the 'Hall of Mirrors', fitted in the void between the stepping of the balcony and its soffit. The hall features flanking arcades of cusped round-headed arches backed by slightly smaller blind arcades inset with pier-glasses. Each end terminates with paired cusped arches. The barrel ceiling is divided into fields by bands of ornamented mouldings.

Interior: Auditorium

The large double-height auditorium is in the Gothic style. Suspended over the proscenium is a canopy comprising five crocketed and cusped gables, above which is a complex screen of latticework arches. The ante-proscenium is divided into three bays, each separated by giant fluted pilasters with composite capitals incorporating stiff-leaf foliage.

The first bay, nearest the proscenium, has huge back-lit stained-glass traceried windows with gable tops above a dado containing two niches and a roundel, flanked by buttresses. The windows are interrupted two-thirds of the way up by bands of reticulated tracery, while in front are suspended pendants hung with 'electric candles'.

The second bays comprise huge arches over twin exit apertures at dado level, themselves flanked by cluster columns. The arches include roll and foliage mouldings and the tympana are decorated with bands of ornament. Above the arches are steeply-pointed gables, the space between the arches and the gables filled by painted decoration: a troubadour on the left and a wimpled maiden attended by a swain on the right. The gables are surmounted by finials of rampant lions holding shields. The gables are flanked by round-headed niches filled with painted decoration representing medieval figures. These niches are capped by gables topped by small foliage finials. Above are three bands of small cusped niches interrupted in the centre by a square back-lit stained-glass window with circular glazing bars and imitation leading. The niches abutting the pilasters contain shields with quasi-armorial bearings; the others are backed with painted decoration of repeated lozenges.

The third bays contain, at dado level, two bands of blind arcading (the upper one with spiral colonnettes and curvilinear tracery), then the ends of the return fronts of the balcony backed by triple colonnades with spiral half-columns supporting round-headed arches surmounted by gables with embellished tympana and foliage finials. The arches are filled with more painted decoration: a troubadour with lute, male and female figures holding musical instruments and a robed male on the left; while on the right, another wimpled maiden, male and female figures in flowing robes and an African boy drummer. Above are three bands of niches, identically treated to those in the second bays. A concave cornice with rosettes runs across. The pilaster furthest from the proscenium is repeated to emphasise the ending of the ante-proscenium. The ceiling over the ante-proscenium has embellished beams connecting the pilasters; the rest is painted to represent a sky with clouds.

Raised standing areas under the balcony against the rear side walls are enlivened with imitation back-lit windows. In front are traceried balustrades and cluster columns. The balcony soffit is heavily coffered with Gothic chandeliers and back-lit glazed roundels. The serpentine balcony front is adorned with spiral decoration.

The huge balcony retains its original seating. It has one central vomitory but with two side entrances enclosed by colonnades supporting pentice roofs. The ceiling over the balcony is sumptuously coffered, with the central section rising into an attic whose sides comprise arcaded ventilation grilles. Gothic chandeliers provide lighting.

The stage has been converted into a cafe for the bingo operation. The fourteen-rank Wurlitzer organ survives under the stage, as does the four-manual organ console in the orchestra pit, together with the rail and its arcaded front.

Historical and Architectural Significance

This is a world class cinema, without doubt the most lavishly decorated interior of any cinema in Britain and among the most lavish in Europe. It is the finest evocation of the sumptuous movie palaces of the 1920s and 1930s, and was the flagship of the Granada circuit. It is the masterpiece of its creators: Sidney Bernstein, the architect Cecil Masey, the mural artists Lucien le Blanc (possibly alias Leslie le Blond) and Alex Johnstone, but towering above all, the inspiration and imagination of Theodore Komisarjevsky, the Russian expatriate prince and theatrical impresario who is now remembered chiefly for his cinema design. The building closed as a cinema in 1973, re-opening as a bingo club three years later.