Vogue Cinema, 52 Newry Street, Kilkeel, Newry, Co Down, BT34 4DN

Vogue Cinema

This is an inter-war cinema built in streamlined Moderne style, situated on a sloping site with its south-west facing façade to Newry Street. The building comprises a large auditorium with flat roofed returns to the left gable and rear that contain entrance, services and offices. The main block has a pitched corrugated asbestos roof with a parapet gutter to the façade and asbestos half-round rainwater goods to the rear. Each verge is concrete coped, and a dashed chimney rises from the rear pitch of the right gable.

The front entrance block is positioned to the left (uphill) of the auditorium and rises two storeys high with a high parapet and a taller advanced vertical pier rising above the parapet at the junction with the auditorium. The walls are painted wet dash with a band-rusticated dado below a dado moulding. Both the parapet and tall pier have plain overhanging concrete copings.

At ground floor centre are two pairs of double leafed original timber entrance doors with five horizontal glazed panes, accessed by a flight of four brown tiled steps. The left pair retains original Modernist chrome handles. Over the doors is a projecting canopy with advanced piers. The canopy soffit features a diagonally set square grid of raised bands with round timber circles containing four modern lights at their intersections.

At first floor are three tall painted timber windows centred on the elevation, each with five horizontal panes (the top ones opening) and horizontal fluted glazing. Each window has an advanced painted concrete cill and is separated by raised concrete mullions rising from the canopy, terminated by a similar concrete transom. Above this is a tall corrugated frieze with a projecting horizontal concrete hood.

The main auditorium wall is dashed and painted with a banded dado and dado moulding. The height of the dado increases as the site slopes down to the right, until the dado moulding forms the head of a doorway at the extreme right of the elevation. This doorway is placed in a small porch with advanced piers supporting the advancing dado, which forms a hood. The right cheek of the porch has no openings; the left cheek has a small two-paned fixed timber window with obscured security glazing, with a similar window on the main wall immediately to its left.

At the centre of the auditorium wall, above the dado line, is a smooth rendered billboard panel flanked by similar narrower panels. Set above in the wall are six blind occuli with concrete architraves. At eaves level are two raised concrete platbands with a corrugated frieze forming the parapet and projecting concrete coping.

The left gable (at the top of the hill) is abutted by the entrance block. The remaining wall on the gable is dashed with a circular metal vent inset. The right gable of the main block is dashed as the façade, with the dado and other details wrapping around the corner before terminating.

At ground floor level on the right gable, a lean-to addition with pitched corrugated asbestos roof and dashed wall is attached. A modern timber and glass door to the left cheek is accessed by steps from the left at ground level. Its rear wall has two modern stained timber casements and a modern door at the right end, plus a lean-to porch with an opening on the right cheek leading into the auditorium.

The rear elevation is dashed and has two tall central 12-paned timber windows (2×6 panes). This elevation is abutted to the left by a single storey return. To the right, where this return abuts the rear elevation, the rear wall is slightly advanced with the return roof advancing to cover it and contains a narrow two-paned casement. Abutting the right cheek of this advanced section is a deep porch formed by two dashed walls supporting a concrete canopy, with a pair of painted timber escape doors inside.

The return has a flat concrete coped roof. Its windows comprise one 3×3 paned timber casement to the rear wall and two on the right cheek, plus six on the right cheek (which steps out slightly from the end gable of the auditorium).

The left cheek of the entrance block is dashed with a first floor window detailed exactly as those over the entrance canopy but only two windows wide, with similarly coped wall above. To the left, the ground floor wall continues with two small two-paned casements to the left end; the first floor steps back with a parapet walk between. Where the first floor steps back, a small top-hung two-paned casement window is positioned on the rear wall of the entrance block. The stepped back first floor wall has a door to the right and three modern two-paned casement windows with transoms over. At the left on the rear wall, similarly set back at first floor, is a window and door.

The rear wall of the ground floor block is flush with the rear wall of the auditorium and is abutted to the right by a recent single storey return. The remaining wall is dashed with a parapet wall broken by access for an attached metal escape ladder. To the left of the ladder is a three-paned casement window. The return has a flat roof, dashed walls and no windows to the rear wall. The right cheek is a continuation of the left elevation of the entrance block and has two recessed glazed timber doors and a row of high square modern timber windows, some of which are paired. The left cheek has three similar windows.

The rear elevation of the main auditorium has two 6/6 timber sliding sashes at its middle section. This is abutted to the left by a single storey flat roofed return. Immediately to the right is a small flat roofed entrance porch with modern two-paned glazed doors. The return has a smooth rendered base and modern windows of no special interest.

Large metal gates hang from dashed piers at each end of the façade.