The Pavilion Theatre and surrounding raised terrace and steps

The Pavilion Theatre and surrounding raised terrace and steps

This entertainment complex on Westover Road in Bournemouth comprises a theatre with ballroom and supper rooms, one of the latter now operating as a public house. Built between 1928 and 1929 by architects G Wyville Home and Shirley Knight, who won a design competition assessed in 1923 by Sir Edwin Cooper, the building was remodelled in 1934 and again in the 1950s, maintaining its original style throughout. Sir E Owen Williams served as consultant engineer.

The design is a beaux arts composition in stripped classical style, executed in red brick with Empire stone dressings and pantiled roofs. The building is arranged in two halves on a steeply sloping site, with the theatre on two levels at the front and the ballroom to the rear, with the supper room and public house below, reached by corridors and stairs flanking either side of the theatre.

The theatre and ballroom entrance presents a three-bay front with round-arched openings and renewed first-floor windows set between broad classical pilasters beneath a deep stone cornice and parapet. Pavilions to either side were raised in the 1950s in a similar style. The roof is surmounted by iron crestings. Behind this façade, a flytower was raised in 1934 and rebuilt in the 1950s with bands of stonework. The side elevations retain some original windows featuring metal margin lights and fan-shaped tops, set in three-bay compositions between pilasters. Rear elevations display renewed windows beneath deep eaves cornices, with the ground-floor public house retaining original metal fenestration beneath late 20th-century awnings.

The interiors survive in remarkably complete condition, showcasing a variety of styles reflecting the prominence of Grecian and Egyptian influences in the late 1920s. The entrance hall is reached via a vestibule with original pendant lights and bears a plaque commemorating the opening by the Duke of Gloucester on 19 March 1929. The three-bay entrance hall features a decorated terrazzo floor, dentilled cornice, and paired Doric columns, with an inner arcade of rounded moulded archways now partly obscured by a reception desk and office. Similar fluted mouldings appear in corridors at either side, which curve downward to serve the theatre stalls, bar, and ballroom. Open-well staircases at either side of the entrance hall rise to the first-floor bar and circle, featuring upswept timber handrails and metal balustrading, topped with Regency-style circular skylights. The first-floor bar, positioned above the entrance hall, spans three bays with circular ceiling mouldings.

The theatre itself seats 1,518 people and is roughly square in plan, with a full-size stage and a circle that was re-raked in 1934 to provide improved sight-lines for plays. Access is from "silence corridors" on both levels, with Egyptian-style mouldings to the door cornices. The theatre interior is executed in a restrained early 19th-century style, with square columns to the rear and sides of the circle and a shallow groin vault with festoon decoration. The balcony front displays a shallow roll moulding with fluted decoration, and the door motif repeats over the rounded and ribbed ante-proscenium, which conceals the pipes for the original Compton organ, positioned to the side of the stage and accessed via the organist's personal green room.

The ballroom features richly moulded ceilings and pendant lights, which were renewed to the original design in modern materials. Beneath it lies the Lucullus Room, a restaurant, reached via staircases with iron arch-moulded balustrading. The Lucullus Room is entered through double doors between fluted Doric columns and retains original wall decoration featuring shallow fluting and mirrors in an elegant moderne style, notably advanced for its date. The ceiling has a shallow recess defined by concave plaster moulding. Beyond it, a larger restaurant space, now a public house, occupies a deep double-height volume surrounded by original mirrors with fan-shaped decoration set between broad piers with fluted tops. The ceiling is similarly banded with matching mouldings.

Surrounding the Pavilion is a raised terrace with steps leading down to the Pleasure Gardens, which are registered on the English Heritage Gardens Register. Together, these form an important entertainment ensemble. The Pavilion represents an excellent and well-preserved example of a purpose-built multi-entertainment venue designed to serve a major seaside resort. Other British resorts lack such a complete and complex example of this style and period. The building was sympathetically extended and improved in the 1930s and 1950s, and remains remarkably cohesive despite the diversity of stylistic influences it incorporates.