Rex Cinema
1 High Street,
Wellington,
TA21 8LX
1 High Street,
Wellington,
TA21 8LX
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Located at High Street and North Street in Wellington, Somerset, the Town Hall was constructed in 1833. It is a three storey rusticated stucco building; the elevation to the rear, along North Street, is of red brick.
The Town Hall Cinema opened in 1909. It was not listed in the 1914 Kinematograph Year Book, but was in the 1923 edition, by which time it was operated by Will Stone’s Pictures.
The Town Hall Cinema was fully refurbished, and a Western Electric(WE) sound system was installed in 1930. Renamed the Rex Cinema, the first ‘talkie’ was “The Broadway Melody”, starring Bessie Love and Anita Page. It was by then operated by Wessex Kinema Company Ltd.
The Rex Cinema closed in 1948.
The ground floor eventually became a craft market, but was subsequently converted into The Iron Duke, a public house operated by J. D. Wetherspoon chain. The upstairs cinema auditorium is said to still be intact.
Contributed by
David Simpson
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Recent comments (view all 1 comments)
Further to the final paragraph in the Overview, I visited the Rex in March 2022. The upper floor of the original town hall building is used by a number of businesses, and there is no obvious indication that any original decoration survives. However, what appears to be the original decorative wooden ceiling can be seen in the section of the pub that occupies the rear part of the building. This can be seen in close-up from a mezzanine floor presumably inserted by Wetherspoon.