Discotheque Royle

Former Regal cinema on the north east side of High Street. Constructed 1930-31 for Uxbridge Entertainments Ltd, a company controlled by cinema speculator A.E. Abrahams. Designed by architect E. Norman Bailey. The building closed as a cinema in 1977.

The exterior features a symmetrical, two-storey Egyptianising faience facade with one wide central bay flanked by two narrow bays. Four original doors are set beneath a cantilevered canopy, above which are five tall windows stepping up towards the centre, standing on a shallow balcony. The flanking bays each contain one tall window. The name REGAL appears in faience over the central windows. All windows have chevron glazing. The parapet trim is multi-coloured faience, culminating in a matching keystone. The returns are hemmed in by adjacent property. A canted bay at one corner expresses a stair tower, with rendered dressings to windows and doorways and a stepped-up parapet. The rear walls combine stock brick and brown facing brick, with the pitched roof of the auditorium visible from behind.

The interior comprises a long foyer leading to a large stadium-type auditorium, where rear seating is raised on stepped levels rather than supported by a balcony. The auditorium's richly scalloped three-dimensional ceiling in the Art Deco manner originally featured entirely indirect lighting with no exposed fittings. A curvaceous proscenium frames the shallow stage. Above a dado, splayed ante-proscenium grills in quasi-Chinese mode stand in stepped-up panels on monumental false balconies of horizontal banding, between superimposed torcheres over circular banded terminals and flanked by fluted pilasters. Similar pilasters divide the side walls, which are enlivened with low relief cloud-like formations and sun bursts, some pierced for ventilation grilles. A broad fluting cornice runs around the space. Particularly elaborate treatments surround the side doors, featuring Egyptian sun disks flanked by stylized lyriform horns connected beneath. Two vomitory entrances serve the raised seating area. A Compton cinema organ survives, although its console is no longer in the original orchestra pit position.

The building is a fine example of a 1930s super-cinema with an exceptional interior that has been described as one of the most highly developed exercises in Art Deco attempted in any cinema. It represents the finest surviving work of E. Norman Bailey.