Description

MARGATE

TR3570NW HIGH STREET
878/1/10020 Margate
05-OCT-00 (West side)
Cinema de Luxe

GV II

Also Known As: Plaza, HIGH STREET, Margate

Place of worship, built as the Cinema de Luxe in 1914-15, with the interior altered in 1936. Original architect: Peter Dulvey Stonham F.S.ARC, FISE (1877-1942). Brick and steel construction, slate roofs. Plaster rendering to the High Street facade and left return wall on Grosvenor Hill, with a painted brick rear extension.

EXTERIOR: Two storeys in subdued Baroque style. The principal feature on the High Street front is a centrally positioned monumental double-height arch with channeled rusticated jambs and a keystone cartouche. Around the top of the main block is a frieze defined by shallow triple plaster string mouldings, above which is a rich entablature incorporating a dentil cornice and pulvinated frieze. Over the entrance arch is a wide tablet with scrolls and guttae at the corners. The ends of the main front have chamfers, the upper storey being corbelled out on elaborate mouldings. Above these latter features are two sets of small twin windows. The left return wall has an emergency doorway surrounded by plaster mouldings to create panelling. Stock brick rear walls. Roof not seen. The entrance arch contains two sets of double doors, above which is a frieze. Further up is an area of square-pane glazing surmounted by a large circular window with a deep hood moulding, flanked by miniature pilasters and volutes.

INTERIOR: A small foyer leads to a double-height auditorium with decoration dating from the two periods of construction. A beamed ceiling of neo-Baroque plasterwork is arranged as fields with lattice roundels to disguise ventilation extracts. At the junction with the side walls the beams are supported by double consoles. The furthest ceiling panel is inclined towards the top of the proscenium. The balcony has a serpentine and shaped front with, on the lower edge, a key-pattern fret. A continuous fibrous plaster streamlined cove below the cornice consoles runs from the balcony along the side walls to form the top of the proscenium, the sides of which feature are created by another area of fibrous plaster cast as vertical flutings. Late twentieth-century fielded panelling on the side walls. The balcony has been converted to office space but the original dome and rich plasterwork mouldings survive above false ceilings.

ANALYSIS: A good example of an architecturally refined early cinema, with many original features and the additional interest of the streamlined work of 1936. The facade is particularly fine of its date. Stonham was a significant local architect, who also designed the listed Torbay Cinema in Paignton, in which he held shares. The building closed as a cinema in 1987.

SOURCES: Martin Tapsell, Memories of Kent Cinemas, Plateway Press, Croydon, 1987, pages 82-3, 103.

Listing NGR: TR3537870612

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26664828

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.

Recommended Books

• 
  Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas and Monuments
• 
  Kent: North East and East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Setting up a Listed Building Heritage Partnership Agreement: Historic England Advice Note 5
• 
  Berkshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Farrow & Ball How to Decorate: Transform your home with paint & paper
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)