The Lyric Theatre and front range to King Street, Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire

Entry Name: The Lyric Theatre and front range to King Street

Listing Date: 28 November 2003

Last Amended: 28 November 2003

Grade: II

Source: Cadw

Source ID: 82203

Building Class: Recreational

ID on this website: 300082203

Location: Situated approximately 40m NE of junction with Queen Street.

County: Carmarthenshire

Community: Carmarthen (Caerfyrddin)

Community: Carmarthen

Built-Up Area: Carmarthen

Traditional County: Carmarthenshire

Tagged with: Theatre

History

Shops and offices in front of theatre, a remodelling of 1935-6 by W.S. Wort of Cardiff of former Assembly Rooms of 1854, by James Wilson of Bath. These were on the site of the Scurlock family town house, where Sir Richard Steele, founder of The Spectator, died in 1729. The site was occupied by The Ivy Bush inn until c1801, and was then premises of the Timmins family, timber merchants. The Assembly Rooms became a cinema and concert hall in 1918, renamed the Lyric Theatre. The Assembly Rooms had a 5-bay, 2-storey Italianate stucco facade with balustraded parapet, cornice, arched first floor windows between paired pilasters, and channelled ground floor with recessed sash windows and centre door. There was a 600-seat hall, extensively refurbished in 1931, and in 1935, virtually rebuilt to seat 1000. The original corner and side wall of the 1854 building remain little altered in Bank Lane. Refurbished as theatre-cum-cinema in late C20, reopened 1992.

Exterior

Range of shops and offices with cinema-theatre behind. 1930s modern style. Three storeys, 5-bay, front range in painted stucco with parapet. Centre bay is stepped slightly higher with plain flanking pilasters, flat-capped and parapet with stepped shoulders. Flanking bays have raised pilasters with centre triangular-section strip, one between windows one to outer angles. Broad band above ground floor. All upper storey windows are 16-pane horned sashes. Central later C20 glazed metal neo-Victorian entrance porch, with columns. Inside, two rectangular overlights over 4 deeply recessed 10-pane glazed panels, the middle 2 of which are doors with 1930s brass door plates and handles. C20 long shopfronts to each side.
Left corner is curved and with left end wall is remnant of the 1854 building. Left end wall has stucco 3-storey, 3-window range with cornice, band, 16-pane first floor sashes and ground floor 2 big recessed panels with cambered-head windows and keystones (same detail as lost front elevation), third bay altered.

Interior

Entrance lobby leads through front range to foyer of theatre behind with 2 sets of 4 glazed doors and glazed display boxes each side. Panelled ceiling obscured. Second set of doors has sunburst glazing over. Foyer has deep panelled ceiling and cornice in bands, half-round booking kiosk with veneer cladding and line decoration in blue, gold and red. Two-panel fielded-panelled door to office on left. Enclosed broad stairs up on right. Two sets of double 2-panel fielded panelled doors to auditorium, both resited in late C20 one bay further out than original. Large auditorium is relatively plain with sloping ceiling and Art Deco style motifs to vents. Upper gallery front has alternate panels with raised strips wrapped around underside of gallery, added late C20 lower gallery. Gallery foyer has Art Deco banded cornice and recessed late C20 bar, detached round pier in front. Display cabinet on opposite wall. Double half-glazed doors to gallery.
In foyer are displayed 2 original Peerless projection units.

Reasons for Listing

Included as a modernist street facade of the 1930s, part of an unusual piece of urban redevelopment with Lyric Buildings to right, and for surviving 1935 cinema interior by W.S. Wort.

External Links

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