Former Elysium Or Gaiety Cinema

623/0/10064 SEASIDE 28-JUL-03 186 Former Elysium or Gaiety Cinema

II

Cinema, later adapted toBingo hall. Dated 1914 on gable. Brick, with some iron columns, hipped tiled roof to front. Long narrow auditorium behind narrow foyer, with small rear gallery. EXTERIOR: Queen Anne style front stuccoed with centrepiece set forward under gable, flanked by paired pilasters, and with dentilled cornice and gable surround. Central paired windows under gable, single windows in flanks, all set within decorated architrave surrounds. These are wooden multipaned sashes. Ground floor has central paired doors and one side door to left, probably of late 1960s or early 1970s; shop fronts in between boarded over at time of survey. Blocked window to left hand side visible internally. Canopy has chrome edgine and may retain an earlier canopy underneath. INTERIOR: Narrow foyer with coved cornice to front and egg and dart moulded cornice and three plaster panels with corner paterae behind. Staircase retains original corner column. Raked auditorium has arcade to either side. Between its shallow openings are set pilasters, terminating in swags and shell capitals. Barrel-vaulted ceiling, with moulded ribs and circular ventilation holes. Proscenium arch is large plastered Caerarvon arch and brick rear wall, to which the screen was probably directly fixed before sound, is visible. Staircase leads to first floor offices and toilets at the front, a narrow corridor with egg and dart cornice and the Gallery. Gallery retains a circular egg and dart moulding,probably for a light fitting, moulded cornice with two side doorcases with chamfered pilasters and the balustrading is very thick suggesting the possibility of earlier balustrading surviving behind.There is a separate staircase from the Gallery to the south. HISTORY: The cinema was built as the Eastbourne Picture Theatre, and became the Elysium Cinema in 1921 and the Gaiety in 1936. Included as an unusually complete example of a pre-1914 cinema, with considerable original plaster decoration.