Description

The following building shall be added:

SD 8010 SW KNOWSLEY STREET
(north-west side)
326-/2/10025 Art Picture House

II

Former cinema, now bingo hall. 1921-2 by Albert Winstanley. Brick-clad steel frame with faience
frontage. Slate and asphalt roof. Three-storey frontage to Knowsley Street masks full-height
auditorium with gallery, boxes, stage and flytower. Faience frontage a symmetrical nine-bay
composition, with three-bay centrepiece and single-bay end pavilions all under stepped pediments.
Heavy cornice links these features, which have pilasters defining the bays. Round-arched central
window rises through first and second floors under keystone; the round-arched motif repeated in
the intervening bays over three-light windows. Frieze between first and second floors bears
inscription to left: ART PICTURES and to right: ART CAFE. The facade a demonstration of
post-Edwardian baroque done with much character. The ground floor simpler, with modern shop
front to right not of special interest.
The interior is richly decorated and theatrical in tone. Original round-arched proscenium with
heavy modillion moulding and supported on paired pilasters - a rare survival. This encrustation of
baroque motifs is repeated in the modillion eaves cornice running round the hall, the plaster ribs
of the barrel-vaulted ceiling and its three ventilation roundels and rear dome, as in the intervening
panels of the side walls set between moulded drops. Single balcony with curved front heavily
decorated with cartouches and swags supported on columns with heavy cornice brackets. On each
side of this balcony are two boxes with extended, rounded fronts between Ionic pilasters set
forward of unmoulded square columns; groin vault over between upturned volutes and with
keystones. Some original seating survives in circle. Circle reached via staircase with marble steps
and gilded metal balustrade with 1920s-style Roman decoration. Large former first-floor cafe over
entrance now lounge.
Albert Winstanley had already converted a former baptist chapel on the same site as a cinema for
the Bury Cinematograph Company in 1910-11.
Included as one of the most elaborate and complete examples of an early 1920s cinema, still
exceptionally theatrical in its plan and decoration.
Source:
Original plans held by Bury M B Archives.

Listing NGR: SD8034310591

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26542851

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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