The Burnt Cinema

 

It's been a while since I've documented a derelict cinema, which is pretty bonkers because I actually love them. Cinemas have a fantastic vibe, but there's an element of sadness to them as well. After all, they were one packed with happy, laughing people, groups of friends, lovers on dates, families, and maybe the occasional solo film lover. There are more of those than you think, and it's okay because humans suck and sometimes you gotta date yourself.

So yes, the entire notion of a place like this being left to rot is pretty sad.

 

Cinemas also tend to have fantastic architecture, but alas, this ones former Art Deco glory was mostly obliterated in an arson attack back in 2018. Did I say humans suck? That was an understatement. Humans are absolute cunts. 

Thankfully, loads of vintage images exist that show this place back in its glory days.

 

(Picture not mine, obviously)

 

Now it's left for the urbexers to document its decline.

 

As you can see, assuming you can read, this cinema finished its life as a bingo hall. That's actually not an uncommon fate for these old cinemas and theatres. The last one I went to was converted into bingo usage too. In fact my 100th and 200th blog posts were about rooftopping on my local bingo hall, and taking a look at the former cinema equipment still in the upper portion of the building. It was pure coincidence that my 100th and 200th blog posts were about the same place. I won't be doing that again. No, for my 300th blog post, I'm doing something long overdue and invading France. How exciting! But I digress.

 

According to maps in 1890, this land was a row of terraced houses, but that row was then demolished in the late 1920s to make way for this awesome place. Don't worry about the folks who lived there. Now they could come back, and enjoy Charlie Chaplin in the same spot where their front room once stood, long before television made its home debut!

This building was the brainchild of an architect named Horace Bradley, considered one of the greatest local theatre architects of his time. He designed many, and renovated many more. This is actually considered one of his best, opening in 1930, at the forefront of the glory days of cinema. Because the vast majority of people alive today grew up in a world where cinema was a thing, we don't really grasp how much of a big deal it was back then. There was a time when the cinema was seemingly magic, and those behind it were full of ideas and dreams about what they could transfer onto the big screen next. For them, the possibilities were endless and the future was bright.

 

Apparently it was a bit of a posh cinema back in the 1930s. It allegedly had two separate entrances, making poorer people queue at a different door. Back then this would have been reflected in the seating arrangements too. Balcony seats were a whopping one shilling and three pence, while ground floor seats costs a shilling and nine pence. Apparently the whole place smelled a bit of floor cleaner, but nobody seemed to mind.

 

The main entrance leads into this yellow lobby area where film-goers would have once  purchased their tickets, and later where bingo-goers would have checked in for a night of riveting fun.

 

 

Stairs lead upwards to the bar and balcony seats, and sunlight is coming in around the corner from the main auditorium, the roof being long gone due to the fire. It actually looks like some partial work may have started on this place, what with the big yellow bin, and the fact that someone has removed the bottom steps in an attempt to dwarf-proof the upper floors.

According to past testimonies, back in the 1930s the National Anthem would play at the end of every movie, and people would rush to leave before it started, so that they wouldn't be expected to sing, which is bloody hilarious.

In 1935 the cinema was taken over by ABC, who seemingly brought about a number of changes. The plain brown curtain over the screen was allegedly replaced with a big frilly thing, and they also introduced a Saturday morning kids club, with a club song and little triangular badges, all of which sounds adorable until I read that if it was a kids birthday, they had to stand in front of the other children and get sang at. No thanks. I think I'd be conveniently sick with the flu on my birthday, if I was ever in such a club.

 

Let's head upstairs!

When I was researching the history of the place, I inevitably found myself looking at old advertisements for various movies that were had here. I find it particularly interesting, because in an industry that wasn't as diverse as it is today, the movies that were popular give a glimpse into what people were into back then.

 The first movie to ever show here was The Love Parade, which is a romantic comedy musical. And then there was the likes of Wells Fargo, a 1937 western, Ambush, a 1939 crime drama, and Gone with the wind, for which the cinema erected a huge billboard that hilariously fittingly, got blown down.

The war did reduce sales somewhat, but the cinema served as a welcome distraction. This cinema showed the likes of "The Corsican Brothers," sort of a Parent Trap with testosterone, but there was also an influx of war-related drama, clearly designed to boost peoples morale when times were a bit bleak. "Edge of Darkness," for example, was a 1943 movie about a village in Norway rebelling against the Nazi occupation and succeeding. 

There was a movie shown here in 1945 called "Without Love" which was about a widow during wartime who marries a scientist. Neither of them love each other, but they believe a loveless marriage is the key to a successful one because they won't be alone, but nor will they give in to jealousy and bickering. And of course, they fall in love by the end anyway because that's the common predictable formula. Or at least, it would be. These guys were writing the formula. These tedious predictable plots were all new at the time. 

It must have been pretty great. 

 

But it's good to think about, because to read old movie plots is one thing. To read about them, and then think about these movies screening here, in this building, helps me put myself into the shoes of those who came to see it, and the people who loved this building in its glory days.

 

I'm not sure what this area was, but I have seen pre-arson images that show it with a metal fence connecting the little corners together. Presumably it was a snack kiosk or something.

 

By the 1950s, movies shown here were given three ratings. These were children, adults only, or children if accompanied by an adult. Some locals tell of how, as children, they would actually wait outside movies and offer money to adults to pretend to be with them, so that they could get into the movies that required adult supervision. It's delightfully genius, and totally throws dirt on all those Facebook boomer memes about how the younger generation today are a bunch of miscreants. Kids have always been rule breakers and always will be. Now shut up. 

 

 

There's a few offices up here but they're all a bit dull.

 

 

Here's the safe.

 

 

And here's the best part of any abandoned building, the toilet. As you can see, when it comes to failing to get excrement into the actual toilet, men come second place here. The pigeon has bested us, once again.

 

 

I absolutely love this hallway. It all seems delightfully vintage, and the peeling paint on the door reveals an earlier, more vibrant colour scheme.

 

 

I'm quite intrigued by the mantelpiece above the radiator too. Surely this wasn't an actual fireplace at some point? 

 

 

Back here we have all the old utility rooms, and they're coloured in this awesome green and purple.  On one of the doors is a sign that says Franks Pad. Presumably Frank worked here. Or maybe he was some sort of West Midlands cinema-themed Phantom of the Opera.

 

 

I absolutely love these big levers on the right.

 

 

Of the entire building, what remains of it anyway, these rooms are my favourite. I love that the theatrical flare in the architecture wasn't just reserved for the publicly accessible areas, but also the offices.

 

There's evidence of a squatter here, but I didn't see anyone.

 

Moving further upstairs, there's this curious alcove with a lightbulb clearly designed to illuminate something that once stood here. What's interesting is that the handrail goes over the alcove and it looks a bit out of place. Presumably it was once open and then the Health & Safety Gods came down to smite. I don't think that handrail would do much good though. If someone was to slip and fall, and grab the handrail for support, this section looks like it would snap.

 

 

Finally, we come out at this awesome old waiting area. In spite of its fire damage, this part still retains hints of its former refinery.

 

 

There are the remains of old stained glass windows  at the front of the building. This one has been smashed.

 

 

Unfortunately only one of the stained glass windows remains as it was.

 

 

There are a few steps that lead up to the former refreshments counter, now decorated with graffiti promises of nutrition-free food.

 

Just beyond the refreshment bar is an old kitchen. There's still a fridge/freezer here that needs a little TLC.

 

Then there's this hole in the wall, and the hilarious promise that I'll survive the drop if I double-jump. From here, we can get a view of the auditorium, the epicenter of the fire damage. 

It's not a pretty sight.

 

Look at this mess. Whoever set fire to this place is a truly despicable waste of a survival instinct. We should send them to America as an example of why abortions should be legal.

What we're looking at here is the former seating area. This was all indoors. Years ago there would have been an additional wall and a ceiling. That big shelf area was a seating area overlooking the ground floor seats. I'm facing it from where the top corner of the screen would be.

It makes me sad. Had I got here only five years sooner, I would have seen a very different cinema.

Fortunately, many urbexers have made it in prior to the fire, and two of them happen to be my friends, Matt and Kelsey, who I've explored with in the past. I reached out to them and asked if I could use some of their images so that we can see what we've lost. 

 

(Photo credit: Matt)

 

Matt actually said that I could use his photos and just say that they were my own, but I declined. I like to keep it real. Everything on this blog is the truth as far as I'm aware at the time of writing. Sometimes I get things wrong but not on purpose. It's why I use the word "allegedly" a lot. If someone told me Elvis came here, I'd say "Elvis allegedly came here. Right here on this glittery stain." 

 

I still get called liar by people who don't know what "allegedly" means, but just leave them to it. We have to live among stupid people because all they do is breed, to make up for the fact that they haven't enough personality to keep a relationship interesting by themselves. 

But I digress, brutally so.

To the best of my knowledge, Elvis never came here.

 

(Photo credit: Matt)

 

Look at it. Think how many people have farted in these seats. People were sat here watching movies when Hitler was invading Poland, when Elizabeth was being made Queen, when astronomers discovered Pluto. This is history, and it was wiped out in a single night by some moron with a box of matches whose sex tape is so short, it's available in Gif format.

Do you see now why urbex is important? Yes, it's trespass, and technically "not allowed." And yes, technically it is dangerous and we might die (that line of thinking implies that if we don't do it, we won't die, which is just weird) but the thing is, urbex is the documentation of what society has lost along the way, and sometimes it's just too beautiful to allow to go unnoticed and unappreciated. The fact that people had to trespass to appreciate this is a greater crime than the trespass itself.

 

 

It's time to make our way to the balcony area and walk among the charred remains of cinema seats. Right this way. 

 

 

The story of the cinema concluded in 1963, with the final movie being PT109, a movie about President Kennedy back when he was fighting in the second world war. People watched that movie, left the cinema, and then never came back.

 

That is, until it reopened as a bingo hall after a brief period of renovation. It lasted as a bingo hall for longer than it lasted as a cinema, finally closing in either 2010 or 2012. I have two contradictory dates.

And then over the course of a decade, the cinema fell into disrepair, but somehow still managed to stay relevant in the news. In 2012 the police uncovered a cannabis farm after allegedly smelling the Devils Lettuce from the street. Two men were arrested. I don't really have much to say on that. Drugs aren't my thing, but it seems a bit unfair that I can down a bottle of vodka, punch someone in the face, and have it get dismissed with "Oh he was just drunk," but some other guy can't relax with a plant. I'd rather have the police tackle real crimes. Whoever set this building on fire is still at large.

 

There was an earlier fire in 2017, but this was apparently small and didn't do much damage at all. However the 2018 blaze was ginormous, taking place at 4am, and lasting for hours. The emergency services had to close the road and warn locals to keep their windows close due to the smoke. I'm not sure who in the UK has their windows open at 4am in September, but someone must have. Weirdos.

 

Apart from the absolute obliteration of the building, one of the main problems with the fire was that the 1960s renovation had included installing some asbestos insulation board, and that had been destroyed in the fire, spreading asbestos across the building and also outside due to the wall and ceiling being damaged. The property owner had to hire an agency to remediate the asbestos, using special cannons that delivered an asbestos suppressing surfactant.  So the good news is, I'm not breathing in anything unpleasant right now.

 

Here we are on the balcony. What a fucking mess. 

 

 

And here's a view from the balcony looking down at where the screen used to be. Now exposed to nature, there are plants growing where the ground floor seats used to be. The archway in the wall over there is where I got my view from the kitchen. 

 

Allegedly during the screening of "The House on Haunted Hill" in 1959, a coffin would appear on stage, and from it a plastic skeleton would emerge and fly over the heads of the audience, suspended on a wire. It's difficult to picture such things happening here, when I'm looking at a wasteland of rubble.

Matt has very kindly let me use his image of this view too, so we can see what I would be looking at if humans weren't so shit.

 

(Photo credit: Matt)

 

I do dislike that I'm late to the party on this particular location. But then there have been cases where I've been very lucky and seen some fantastic places before they were demolished and lost forever, so life is a balancing act. Can't be lucky all the time.

 

Up here we also have the balcony toilets.

And finally steps back to the ground floor. It's time to see the auditorium on the ground.

 

It's still very much a mess down here, but what I do like is the lines across the floor. Presumably these mark the original cinema seating layout.

 

Prior to the fire, there was a bit of conflict about the cinemas future. The owner wanted to demolish it to build apartments, but had his planning application refused. However with the fire damage being this extravagant, many suspect he'll stand a better chance of getting permission granted. Many say that the fire was suspicious for this reason. But there was a campaign to restore the building back to cinema use, complete with community facilities for art groups and children too. That was gaining significant traction prior to the fire, but now I'm not sure how realistic it is. It's an ambitious project to pull off given the buildings current condition, but I would love to see them do it.

At the very least, the frontage of the building can be saved. The local council and even the mayor have voiced their support. Historic England have also voiced their opposition to demolition of the site. 

So it seems that the support is there, but not the resources. Alas, we cannot save a building with good vibes. It would be great if we could.

Plans for the restoration do look quite cool though. As well as rebuilding the main auditorium, a second screen will be added in a modern extension, with retractable seats so that it can double up as a performance space and cafe too. It would be cool to see.

 

Here we have the ground floor toilets. 

 

 

And what's this? Stairs leading underground to more toilets. These ones are pretty flooded, what with being underground, but there's enough rubble to lean on to get a quick look. 

 

Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs!

We'll finish up on a rooftop shot of the town. It's not the prettiest of towns but who doesn't like a rooftop shot?

 

To conclude, I think it's very obvious from my ranting how I feel about this place. It's a sad loss. All that history was destroyed in a single night just because someones parents were siblings. I'd like to extend my gratitude to any urban explorers who photographed this place before the fire. It's been documented, and that is a small mercy. If anyone would like to see this place still, then be aware that fire damaged buildings are weaker than most, so take extra precautions.

That's all I've got. My next blog is a fucking boat. Not the boat I posted on Instagram recently. No, this is Boat Lite, but still pretty awesome. And then a fairly mediocre blog about a well known abandoned service station. But that should be someones cup of tea, I'm sure. In the meantime, follow me on Instagram, Vero, Reddit, and also Faceboomer and Twatter too.

Thanks for reading!