Pavilion Picture Theatre

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Uploaded on: January 23, 2015

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This photo is dire, but it captures the conflagration at the Empress Ballroom, which had been trading as the “Mecca Dancette” at the time. (Was that a word-play on the brand name of the popular make of record-player?) The 1912 licensing magistrates' concerns about the fire safety of the wood and corrugated iron structure had come to pass.

One internet site dates this to a Sunday in November 1960; another dates it to Sunday 13 September 1959.

The photo shows the ‘new elevation on Church Street’ which was mentioned in the licensing hearing of August 1927 about redeveloping the cinema as a ballroom. “The present front of the building was to be removed entirely, and the new one set back by arrangement with the Corporation, in accordance with the terms which had been arranged.”

So the 1909, vaguely-Gothic, façade of the rink and the subsequent cinema became a 1927 (stepped-back) classical one as seen above.