Former Cinema, 18 Lower Strabane Road, Castlederg, Co.Tyrone, BT81 7AZ

Former Cinema, Lower Strabane Road, Castlederg, County Tyrone Built c.1930; front porch demolished April 2010

This former cinema on the south side of Lower Strabane Road, Castlederg, is a double-height, gable-fronted structure built around 1930 and constructed almost entirely of corrugated metal — an early and relatively rare surviving example of this material's use for a purpose-built public entertainment building. It is of social, historic and architectural interest both to the local community and to the broader history of cinema development in Northern Ireland, though its architectural integrity was significantly diminished when its classical entrance porch was demolished in April 2010.

The building is rectangular on plan. Its roof is pitched corrugated metal with timber bargeboards and half-round uPVC rainwater goods. The main hall walls are corrugated metal throughout, with the exception of the north gable, which is metal sheeted. The principal road-facing gable faces north and was formerly abutted at ground floor level across its full width by the entrance porch. With the porch removed, the exposed section of the main hall shows three equally spaced small square openings and a ventilation grille at the apex.

The entrance porch, now demolished, was a single-storey classical composition with a shallow pitched corrugated metal roof concealed behind a parapet incorporating a breakfront pediment. It was finished in painted smooth render with moulded plaster detailing. The central feature was a pedimented breakfront containing a round-headed entrance opening with a moulded stucco archivolt and impost moulding, flanked on each side by quarter-engaged Doric pilasters on plinth blocks. At either side of this centrepiece was a large window opening with a moulded stucco surround, and the porch was terminated at each end by further Doric pilasters. The cheeks of the porch each contained a small timber casement window. The principal entrance was deeply recessed within the porch and consisted of a double-glazed and panelled door (boarded at the time of recording). Four panelled doors led to rooms at either side of the porch interior.

The east elevation is otherwise blank, apart from a pair of timber doors offset to the left. Squares of corrugated metal indicate five former window openings, now blocked. The rear gable is abutted by a lean-to addition on a concrete block plinth. The west elevation mirrors the east, with a small glazed aperture at the extreme north end. All windows across the building were boarded or sheeted over at the time of recording.

The building sits directly on the street, with the porch formerly accessed straight from the pavement. The hall is flanked by 20th-century dwellings. Modern boundary walls delineate the site, and the perimeters are grassed and overgrown.

Historical background

The cinema is first shown, uncaptioned, on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1939, and first appears in valuation records in 1934. At that date it was described as a cinema operated by Ernest S. E. Stewart, who leased the building from a S. Gailey. The valuation was set at £38, later raised to £40. The building had a frontage of 30 feet, was constructed entirely of corrugated iron and lined with beaverboard, and provided accommodation for 335 persons. A plan recorded at the time showed an engine room behind the cinema containing a 14 horsepower oil engine. Ticket prices were 6d, 9d, 1s and 1s 3d. The valuer noted: "Seating capacity 306. One house a night, though when there is a specially good film there are two houses. Average takings a night are £4 of which about £1 is profit."

In 1935 the proprietor appealed the valuation, describing the premises as a Kinematograph Theatre. Records show that the contract price of the building in 1933 was £478. The valuer noted that the picture house was not well patronised, recording a total turnover from 1 April 1934 to 1 April 1935 of £1,162 13s 9d, with the cost of renting films running to approximately £600 per annum, leaving roughly £600 to cover running costs and the wages of three attendants, two operators, one ticket clerk and a manager — described as the minimum staff necessary. The valuers, concluding that the cinema was struggling, reduced the valuation to £30.

Despite these early financial difficulties, the cinema evidently became a well-loved local institution. A former worker at the Spamount Woollen Mill, Tommy Maguire, recalled its popularity in the 1960s: "Most of my friends and workers in the mill would have visited the cinema 3 or 4 times a week. Unlike now where a film runs for almost a month, sometimes more, there were 4 different films on at the local cinema during the week. They usually ran Monday, Tuesday then changed Wednesday, Thursday, then changed Friday, Saturday and then in later years there came a Sunday film." He also recalled: "For years the only place of entertainment was the local cinema. We liked almost everything, but our favourites far and away were the Westerns." His enthusiasm for the cinema inspired him to make his own Western film, The Gunhawks, using local people as cast members, which still received occasional showings as late as 1998.

The cinema at Castlederg appears to have formed part of a second wave of cinema building in Northern Ireland. The Lumière Cinematographe had arrived in Belfast in 1896, several months after the first British screenings in London, and over the following decade film exhibition grew steadily in adapted venues such as variety halls rather than purpose-built cinemas. Towards the end of the first decade of the 20th century, entrepreneurs began building and converting structures specifically for cinema exhibition, and 1910 marked the beginning of a boom in Belfast with six cinemas opening in six months, rising to twelve by early 1914. This initial expansion was encouraged by the 1909 Cinematograph Act, which required all cinemas to obtain licences from their local authority to ensure compliance with fire regulations. Sound arrived in Northern Ireland in 1929 with Al Jolson in The Singing Fool, and by 1931 most Belfast cinemas had converted to sound. A second expansion of cinema provision began in 1933, with sixteen new cinemas opening by 1937 — the period in which the Castlederg cinema was built and first in use. The late 1940s and early 1950s represented a boom time for cinema nationally, with ticket sales at their peak, but the arrival of television brought a gradual decline through the 1960s and cinemas began to close.