The Duke Of Yorks Cinema

BRIGHTON

TQ3105SW PRESTON CIRCUS 577-1/27/689 (North East side) 24/11/94 The Duke of York's Cinema

II

Cinema. Opened on 22 September 1910. Designed by CE Clayton for Mrs Violet Melnotte-Wyatt. Stucco, brick and cobbles in mortar to the rear, roof of slate. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys, 3-window range. Single-storey porch to the centre, one bay deep and 2 wide, in the form of a Palladian arcade with ornate, typically Edwardian Ionic columns and cartouches in the place of keystones, the pilasters decorated with Rococo ornament; dentil cornice; parapet with openwork panels between piers, central panel with segmental cornice and urns on piers. 2 flat-arched entrances with eared architraves, pulvinated frieze and cornice, the frieze interrupted in a characteristically Edwardian way by a rectangular panel. The ground floor either side of the porch is rusticated, with round-arched openings, now glazed as for shops; the upper part of the facade has a slightly recessed centre over the porch with 3 flat-arched windows, now blocked, having architraves and cornices on consoles, and over each a less than circular window in an oval Rococo frame with festoons and drops; modillion cornice; parapet with openwork panels either side of a semicircular pediment on consoles framing a clock surrounded by a wreath and scrolling foliage; the side wings are flanked by rusticated pilasters and have, from the first floor upwards, an oval oculus, aedicule, consoles with drops carrying a round-arched archivolt, modillion cornice and parapet; these wings were originally crowned by domes. The left-hand return in Stanley Road is detailed like the front for one bay; then comes the single-storey auditorium with 2 flat-arched entrances with architraves and 3 blank windows, the wall divided into 8 bays; the eastern ends shows cobble and mortar construction in brick panels, said to survive from the buildings of the Amber Ale Brewery, formerly on this site. INTERIOR: vestibule with cornice, and floor paved with tiles and terrazzo. The auditorium is a single ramped space; the proscenium arch has a concave architrave decorated with stars; the side walls are divided into 6-and-a-half bays by Doric pilasters which support the ribs of the elliptical-arched ceiling; the rear one-and-a-half bays contain a gallery, segmental in plan, and cantilevered out from 4 Doric columns. The auditorium was redecorated in June 1937, but it may be that only the proscenium arch and the present gallery date belong to this period of alteration. HISTORICAL NOTE: most purpose-built cinemas in Britain dating from before the First World War were built in 1910-1914, following the Cinematograph Act which came into force on 1 January 1910; The Duke of York's is thus one of the oldest surviving, and largely unaltered, purpose-built cinemas in Britain. (Carder T: The Encyclopaedia of Brighton: Lewes: 1990-).

Listing NGR: TQ3118805471