The former Carlton Theatre

This is a cinema built in 1927 by architects Frank Verity and Sam Beverley. The stage, back-of-house areas and auditorium were substantially altered in the late 1970s, when the interior was subdivided into three screens.

Materials and Construction

The façade is built of Portland stone. Windows are timber and steel, and the fire escape doors are heavy timber construction. The main entrance doors are later replacements, made of glass with brass and timber door furniture.

Plan and Layout

The building stands on the west side of Haymarket, with its only visible elevation facing east. Its plan divides into two main parts. To the front (east) is a block containing the public foyers, offices and staff rooms, spread over six levels including a basement. Half-levels containing the lavatories link to staircases running north and south through the building.

Behind this frontage block lies the former auditorium, now divided into three cinemas. The principal auditorium occupies the first floor, with seating in what was originally the main balcony. The upper part of the original proscenium arch provides the back wall, and the projection room remains in its original location. The former stalls level has been divided into two small auditoriums, one to the north and one to the south, with their screens positioned just in front of the lower part of the proscenium. The projection rooms for these screens occupy part of the former royal circle at entrance level (behind the main foyer). The royal circle has been enclosed roughly along the line of its original balcony front and now also contains a bar and lounge area, accessed from the main foyer. The routes that originally led through the royal circle and around the side of the auditorium to the boxes have been partly reconfigured and are now for staff use only.

Exterior

The Portland stone façade has seven bays, with the central five projecting forward in a palazzo-style composition. A large illuminated hoarding now screens the centre of the elevation, though the original architectural arrangement is believed to survive behind.

Above the entrance canopy (currently hidden by the hoarding) is a piano nobile with three round-headed windows featuring carved tympana and balustrading. These are flanked by two windows with swan neck pediments and cartouches bearing the Paramount logo: a ring of stars around a mountain peak. The windows above, expressed as the second floor but actually the third floor, are linked by a richly carved stone balconette (also hidden by the hoarding). The window lintels have keystones carved with masks—portraits of the two architects and Verity's daughter (who was Beverley's wife and undertook some of the interior decoration). Two elliptical windows and two square-headed windows with heavy lattice grilles flank this arrangement. The composition is capped by a prominent dentil cornice and deep parapet. The principal windows are glazed with small circular leaded lights in a Spanish style.

Verity and Beverley were commissioned to create a wider canopy over the main entrance in the 1950s, which was further altered in the 1970s when the entrance doors were also renewed. The visible canopy and main doors with their tiled surrounds are believed to date from the 1970s, though slender metal braces possibly belonging to the original 1927 canopy remain in place above. Flanking the entrance doors are panels with advertising space above pierced ventilation panels. This is an original arrangement, but with modern illuminated box signage.

The façade is flanked by two one-bay staircase towers in a Modern style. Built of ashlar with unadorned window openings and a plain cornice, their only embellishments are two heavy panelled doors with carved exit signs.

Interior

The frontage block survives largely in its original form with much of its original decorative scheme intact. There is good survival of joinery and plasterwork. The auditorium has suffered greater alteration due to its subdivision, and in some instances original joinery appears to have been relocated.

Frontage Block

The most notable survival is the main entrance foyer, which has a shallow barrel-vaulted ceiling richly decorated with finely detailed plasterwork panels. A deep cornice at the wall head is supported on enriched pilasters. On the back wall, opposite the entrance doors, is a pair of ornate polished mahogany surrounds with Baroque styling which formed the outer part of ticket booths, now without their counter fronts. Between them is the original door into the royal circle, now a bar and lounge.

To either side of the foyer (north and south) are staircases with heavy, enriched, turned hardwood vase balusters and heavily moulded handrails. The balustrade to the north is a replica of the original, replaced after the fire of 1985. The landings feature mirrors and hardwood doors with enriched surrounds, and several decorative radiator casings.

The first-floor foyer bar, which served the main balcony (now the main auditorium), has a decorative plasterwork cornice and deep coving behind the bar. The hardwood bar counter and bar-back survive with minor remodelling, and there is a drinks shelf for standing drinkers around the wall.

The basement foyer bar was later used as a restaurant and has long been disused. Approximately half of the ceiling plasterwork survives, featuring large ceiling roses combined with ventilation grilles. One of the large glass pendant lights survives adjacent to the hardwood bar. Much of the bar and bar-back appears to survive.

The stairs and circulation spaces linking the foyer areas, with lavatories on the half landings, mostly retain their hardwood doors and door surrounds, plasterwork (a simple stepped cornice in some areas, more decorative plasterwork in others), brass handrails and mirrors with decorative surrounds. In the staff areas on the upper floors, the original fittings and plasterwork are of simple good quality and generally survive well, though some areas have been replaced.

Auditorium

The main auditorium appears to retain the original rake of the seats, though the seating has been renewed. The principal feature is the original ventilated ceiling in neo-renaissance style, divided and subdivided by heavy beams extensively enriched with hierarchies of decorative plasterwork. Around the walls runs a dentil course and a deep plaster frieze enriched with mouldings. Below the frieze, the walls are lined in acoustic material from the later conversion.

As of 2018, a stage has been erected at the front of the auditorium (where the cinema screen had been installed) as the space is being used for live performance. The back wall (at the back of the stage) is clad in acoustic material, but where this is coming away, the top part of the proscenium arch can be seen. The opening of the arch has been infilled with blockwork, but parts of the flat plaster frame are visible, as are fragments of the plasterwork decoration to the tympanum. The full extent of survival cannot be ascertained because of later coverings, but the bottom edge of the tympanum plasterwork is rough and damaged, indicating the lower part has been hacked off. At the sides of the stage, the top part of the flat plaster frames of the original boxes can be seen; the space once occupied by the decorative tympanum is now filled with blockwork.

The former stalls are now divided into two small auditoriums, one north and one south, with screens positioned in front of where the proscenium arch was, approximately where the boxes were located. The walls of the former stalls were originally lined with full-height decorative panelling, a stretch of which survives in a corridor created along the north wall. Some of this panelling can also be seen on the walls to the north and south of the respective cinema screens—the area originally beneath the boxes. Here the panelling is plaster, though it is believed to have been of timber construction elsewhere. The extent of survival in these areas is unclear as the material is now largely hidden behind later acoustic material, and what is visible has been damaged. No other decorative work is visible in the former stalls. The doors to the rear of the two auditoria are original, and a third one with its decorative architrave survives in the corridor to the north (originally part of the stalls).

The central part of the former royal circle has been formed into a bar and lounge area with all modern finishes. At either end of this space (north and south) are doors into what are now staff-access only spaces. Immediately adjacent to the lounge, to either side, modern projection rooms have been created for the lower auditoria. Beyond these are the circulation spaces which gave access to the boxes around the side of the auditorium.

The north and south sides were not originally symmetrical and have undergone different levels of alteration. To the south, a bottle store has been created in the corner adjacent to one of the original doors into the circle; the decorative architrave survives here, but not the door. Further west, towards where the access to the box would have been and the fire escape beyond, there has been reconfiguration and finishes are not original and very plain.

On the north side, the configuration survives well, with decorative door architraves, the stairs (now recovered) which ran down beside the raked seating of the royal circle, and the ceiling plasterwork and plasterwork pilasters on the walls. The small triangular lobby which gave access to the box is now a store cupboard with the door to the box blocked, but again the ceiling plasterwork survives.

On both sides of the former royal circle are hatches which give some understanding of how the auditorium was reconfigured. In the hatch to the south, a sinuous curve near the floor suggests the line of the royal circle balcony front, and an inserted ceiling over the lower auditorium rises upwards from here in the direction of the proscenium. Above is the concrete underside of the upper auditorium floor. In the hatch to the north, the engaged columns and pilasters of the north box can be seen, as can the diamond and fleur-de-lys pattern of the box's back wall. The column capitals have been removed, and above is the floor of the upper auditorium.

Although it cannot be stated with absolute certainty because of limited access to these spaces, it is likely that the balcony front of the royal circle has been entirely lost. There is fragmentary survival of the north box, and no evidence of any survival of the south box has been identified.