Curzon Cinema

Curzon Cinema

Cine-variety theatre built 1920–22 for Victor Cox, possibly incorporating earlier fabric. The building is constructed of red brick with stone dressings to the facade. The auditorium is lined with pressed metal, probably tin. The roof is large and pantiled with a single stack.

The building follows a rectangular plan, with a two-level auditorium set behind a parade of seven shops and a first-floor cafe. The cafe and cinema were originally accessed from separate entrances at either end of the main facade; the cafe entrance is now converted to shops. The main facade is a near-symmetrical composition, with a five-bay centrepiece between end pavilions. The left pavilion served the Oak Room Cafe, for which signage survives; the right pavilion housed the cinema entrance and is treated more elaborately. Both end pavilions are under simple gables with coping and deep cornices, with tympani set under giant voussoirs. The tympanum to the cinema entrance is infilled with a moulded sunburst pattern in artificial stone. Between the pavilions are five bays with original casement windows under a pierced and decorated stone frieze, separated by Ionic pilasters. The ground floor has rusticated pilasters with shops inset between them. The original cafe entrance is now blocked by two further shops; the cinema entrance is divided between two glazed double doors and a small shop. The side elevations feature two rows of blind arcading, with the upper rows stepped in line with the gables.

The interior foyer contains a bronzed metal staircase with moulded decoration and timber balustrade leading to the upper cinema space. On the first floor, the Oak Room Cafe is panelled to picture-rail height with pilasters. The ceiling is treated as a black and white composition with beams running across between the pilasters—a composition typical of inter-war cafe interiors with Viennese origins. The original entrance door is blocked.

The double-height auditorium, with a balcony on three sides, is the most impressive interior space. It demonstrates the interest in side slips briefly popular in the early 1920s. The walls, ceiling and proscenium arch are entirely lined in painted pressed-metal decorative sheets, probably tin and certainly of a rare manufacturers' system such as Skelionite. This is the earliest and most complete example of such a system known to survive in England. The auditorium was subdivided by a false ceiling in 1996, but the decoration remains intact apart from the balcony fronts, which are now gone. The trabeated barrel-vaulted ceiling is made up of metal panels with similarly decorated arches and central rosettes. The walls feature scaled decoration, panels and dado between square pilasters, all made of the same material. The original proscenium survives as a square frame decorated with pilasters and acanthus decoration, all in metal, under a gable and rosette. The stage retains its fly floor and hemps, with dressing rooms to the sides.

The building is listed as a remarkable surviving example of pressed-metal decoration. Pressed metal or tin was suited to cinema construction because it was non-inflammable at a time when nitrate film posed a serious fire risk to such buildings. This is the earliest and most complete example of such a system known to survive.