Former Gala Bingo Hall

Former Gala Bingo Hall, St John's Hill, SW11

This building was originally a Granada Cinema, designed in 1937 by Cecil Masey, H R Horner and Leslie Norton, with interior design by Theodore Komisarjevsky. It became a bingo club after July 1980.

The exterior is constructed of brick with rendered dressings. The auditorium runs parallel to St John's Hill and terminates in a high stage house or fly tower. The entrance features a rounded profile on the left-hand corner, with further rounded angles on the facade facing Plough Road, inspired by contemporary Dutch modernist work. Above the main entrance are five paired windows on the first floor, surrounded by Moderne mouldings in painted render. At second floor level are roundel windows, with a parapet featuring channelled brickwork. A long line of windows on the St John's Hill front lit the former cafe, now used as offices.

The interior begins with a simply decorated wind lobby leading to a double-height foyer with galleries on two sides, stairs on the third side, and mirrors between pilasters on the upper half of the fourth side, creating an impression of greater space. The pilasters have composite capitals at upper level, and wrought iron balustrades line the balconies and stairs. The ceiling is divided by beams from which are suspended elaborate double stage glass chandeliers with castellated tops.

The upper level on the auditorium side forms a foyer to the balcony. The walls are composed of arch-topped mirrors flanked by barley-sugar detached columns and niches. The large auditorium on two levels originally seated approximately 3,001 spectators and features elaborate classical decoration in fibrous plaster. The proscenium has triple superimposed pilasters with composite capitals, surmounted by an entablature and a frieze of scrolling acanthus leaves.

The ante-proscenium splay walls are arranged as plinth, main storey and attic with acanthus decoration extended overall from the proscenium frieze. The plinths have coupled consoles of fish-scale decoration supporting a decorated frieze at string level. The main storey is treated as a tripartite composition with central niches flanked by twin half-columns under segmental pediments, filled with allegorical painted panels of classical female figures symbolising music. Flank panels in openwork fibrous plaster mask ventilation grilles.

The serpentine-fronted balcony is typical of Cecil Masey's work, with ends terminating in three rows of cascading loge seating. The junction of the ante-proscenium splay with the balcony walls is masked by angle features in the form of coupled round-headed niches divided by a pilaster and embellished with arabesques, masks of tragedy and comedy, and festoons in the tops. The balcony side walls feature hexagonal ashlar blockwork in plaster and three twin niches separated by colonettes with barley-sugar twists. Entrance to the balcony is via two vomitories against the side walls.

The ceiling over the front stalls area is enriched with a central roundel with arabesque decoration supporting a large round light fitting with castellated shades matching those in the foyer, flanked by subsidiary roundels. The main ceiling over the balcony features a central attic section, all enriched with arabesque and scrolling acanthus. Original seating in the balcony has seat end standards enriched with classical decoration. The rear balcony wall has honeycomb decoration, and the balcony soffit features coffering in the rear section.

This building is listed because of the exceptional elaboration and quality of decoration by Komisarjevsky, the most remarkable designer of cinema interiors to work in Britain. This is his most ambitious surviving scheme in the classical mode, surpassed only by his two listed Gothic works at Tooting and Woolwich. The interior represents the culmination of the sumptuously decorated super cinema of the 1930s, a style celebrated by the cinema's promoter, Sidney, later Lord Bernstein, as providing an escapist and luxurious atmosphere appropriate for a night out for the masses at the time.