Description

TL0122 DUNSTABLE

HIGH STREET NORTH
(Southwest side)

724/3/10006 Union Social Club

II

Former cinema, of the same name, built 1936-7 to the designs of Leslie H Kemp. Red/brown brick to front and immediate returns, with Fletton brick to body of auditorium; roof obscured by high parapets. Double-height auditorium with single balcony, served by foyers on two levels with offices to sides.
EXTERIOR: Symmetrical three-storey facade. Four sets of double doors approached by four steps from the pavement, and five tall windows at first-floor level with stone surrounds. A continuous balustrade in scrolling metal runs across the bottom of these windows. Above the central window a female figure in stone relief offers film spools aloft before a draped proscenium. Corners at the top set back. Parapet with concrete coping. Facade returns of similar brick but irregular fenestration.
INTERIOR: Foyer with circular central plaster ceiling mouldings incorporating Vitruvian scroll and honeysuckle motifs. Fluted pilasters with honeysuckle, scroll and tazza motifs. Doors to auditorium each having eight square panels. To the right stairs up to upper foyer have fine metal balustrade of scrolling design. Two fluted niches and a mirror on the outer wall of the stairs, with fluted frieze and simple moulded cornice. Spacious upper foyer with Corinthian pilasters and one column supporting an architrave in front of the windows, which rise into a cove higher than the main part of the ceiling. Richly coffered ceiling. At the opposite end to the stairs is a full-height mirror with etched glass panels at the top in a scrolling design with tazzas and griffins, also incorporating a clock face. An ashtray is inset on the wall near the top of the stairs with Art Deco lettering -'ASHES'.
Long double-height auditorium. Proscenium with niches either side running tot he full height above the emergency exit doors. Niches flanked by fluted columns with composite Ionic capitals and fibrous plaster grilles, the design of the latter based on arabesques. Panels of similarly designed fibrous plaster continue back along the side walls in horizontal panels, interspersed with plain bands separated by cyma mouldings. Continuous fluted frieze at cornice level. Elaborately moulded ceiling rising as a series of fluted bands in drum form supporting pendants and circular ventilation openings with fibrous plaster grilles in stylized foliage design.
ANALYSIS: A cinema with an interior once typical of the ambitious Art Deco schemes executed for Union Cinemas in the 1930s, in emulation of the still more elaborate Granada cinemas but in a distinctive idiom. This policy eventually bankrupted the company in 1937 and few, if any, other Union cinemas survive in comparable condition. Leslie Kemp was a prolific cinema designer of the period, but few of his buildings survive; the Regal Camberwell (LB Southwark) is a simpler design which is already listed. The Union Dunstable closed as a cinema in 1973 but has survived little altered as a bingo hall.
Sources
Allen Eyles, ABC: The First Name in Entertainment, London, Cinema Theatre Association, 1993, pp.24- 7, 138
Allen Eyles, ' Union Cinemas', in Focus on Film no.37, March 1981
David Atwell, Cathedrals of the Movies, London, Architectural Press, 1980, pp.53, 93, 110-11 Richard Gray, Cinemas in Britain, London, Lund Humphries, 1996, pp.111-13

Listing NGR: TL0170822025

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26561706

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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