The County Cinema, 14 Bath Street, Portobello, Edinburgh

Former 'super cinema' designed by architect Thomas Bowhill Gibson in 1939 in the Art Deco/Moderne style. The building is a large, three storey, rectangular plan purpose-built cinema made up of a flat roofed entrance section and pitched and piended roof auditorium behind.

The central part of the symmetrical, principal (southeast) elevation is set forward with rounded towers flanking seven slightly stepped advancing vertical bands. There are single storey sections to each side with full height blank sections set back behind them. There are wide granolithic steps to the main entrance which has a later flat roofed overhanging box canopy with small, curved sections to each side. The side and rear elevations are built in rendered brick and the vertical structural steel frames are exposed. The rear elevation has three boxed sections protruding at low level (the horn chambers).

The main elevation and small side returns have a low level coloured band of render over former mosaic tiles and the towers are rendered on the hard. The rest of the main elevation is clad in timber frame and sheet boards dating to around 1974. The roof is pitched (piended to the rear) and clad in corrugated asbestos sheets.

The entrance vestibule has a coombed ceiling with a fluted frieze, and former ticket booth. There are paired staircases with iron bannisters leading to the balcony. The interior of the main auditorium is subdivided with a lowered suspended ceiling enclosing the public ground floor bingo hall. Decorative architectural details of the proscenium arch remain in the bingo hall and the decoration largely survives above the suspended ceiling. This includes moulded and raised Art Deco/Moderne style motifs set around the screen and horizontal linear chevron details with circular niches. The balcony is intact although seats have been removed; the projection room holes to the auditorium space remain.

There are investigative access holes in the surfaces of the interior decorative scheme made after 2016.