The Duke Of Yorks Cinema

The Duke of York's Cinema is a cinema opened on September 22, 1910, designed by CE Clayton for Mrs Violet Melnotte-Wyatt. The building is constructed of stucco, brick, and cobbles in mortar to the rear, with a slate roof.

The exterior is two storeys, with a three-window facade. A single-storey porch, one bay deep and two wide, dominates the centre and is designed as a Palladian arcade with ornate, typically Edwardian Ionic columns and cartouches in place of keystones. The pilasters are decorated with Rococo ornament, and the porch features a dentil cornice and a parapet with openwork panels, with urns on piers and a segmental cornice over the central panel. Two flat-arched entrances, featuring eared architraves, a pulvinated frieze, and cornice, flank the porch; the frieze is interrupted by a rectangular panel in a characteristic Edwardian style. The ground floor either side of the porch is rusticated, with round-arched openings now glazed as shops. The upper part of the facade has a slightly recessed centre with three blocked flat-arched windows, each with an architrave and cornice on consoles, topped by a less-than-circular window in an oval Rococo frame with festoons and drops. A modillion cornice runs along the top, leading to a 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 originally featured domes, now removed, and have an oval oculus, an aedicule, consoles with drops carrying a round-arched archivolt, a modillion cornice, and a parapet.

The left-hand return in Stanley Road mirrors the front facade for one bay, transitioning to a single-story auditorium with two flat-arched entrances with architraves and three blank windows, the wall divided into eight bays. The eastern end demonstrates cobble and mortar construction in brick panels, believed to be remnants of the Amber Ale Brewery that previously occupied the site.

The interior features a vestibule with a cornice and a floor paved with tiles and terrazzo. The auditorium is a single, ramped space, and the proscenium arch has a concave architrave decorated with stars. The side walls are divided into bays by Doric pilasters, which support the ribs of the elliptical-arched ceiling. The rear section contains a cantilevered gallery, segmental in plan, projecting from four Doric columns. The auditorium was redecorated in June 1937, although it is possible that only the proscenium arch and the present gallery date from this period.

The Duke of York's is historically significant as one of the oldest surviving, largely unaltered, purpose-built cinemas in Britain, reflecting the boom in cinema construction following the Cinematograph Act of 1910.