Listing
Search the List

What is Listing?

Listing Guidance

Apply for Listing

Missing Pieces Project

Blue Plaque Scheme
Listing

Find out about listed buildings and other protected sites, and search the National Heritage List for England (NHLE).

Find out about listing

Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Grade II listed © Historic England Archive DP371715
Advice
Climate Change

Heritage at Risk

Your Home

Technical Guidance

Planning

Caring for Heritage

Constructive Conservation
Advice

Our expert advice to help you care for and protect historic places.

Get our advice

A contractor cutting bricks for the wall of the partially-restored wild and natural walled garden at Warley Place, Brentwood. Explore our technical advice section © Historic England Archive DP313199
Research
Our Research Strategy and Agenda

Research Governance

Latest Research

Research Methods

Current Research

Research Results

Support & Collaboration

Inclusive Heritage

Heritage Counts
Research

Discover and use our high-quality applied research to support the protection and management of the historic environment.

Discover our research

Archaeologist Dr David Neal discussing his illustration of the mosaic being excavated at Rutland Roman Villa with members of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services team View image DP264265 © Historic England
Images & Books
Find Photos

Search All Publications

Buy Books

The Historic England Archive
Images & Books

Historic England holds an extensive range of publications and historic collections in its public archive covering the historic environment.

Browse our collections

Crowds flock around the Skylon and Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain South Bank Site on 12 May 1951. Both structures were dismantled at the end of the Festival in 1952. Photographer: Aerofilms Ltd, Image reference: Source: Historic England Archive EAW035702
Services & Skills
Education

Grants

Our Planning Services

Training & Skills

Archive Services

Heritage Action Zones

Levelling Up Places Service
Services & Skills

Find out about services offered by Historic England for funding, planning, education and research, as well as training and skill development.

Learn about our services

Heritage Apprentices in a training session on the Researching The Historic Environment module and training in Architectural Photography. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships © Historic England Archive DP347660
What's New
News

In Your Area

Historic England Blog

Latest Research

Heritage Online Debate

Statements

Stay up to Date
What's New

Read about our current news, projects and campaigns nationally and in your area.

Catch up with what's new

Two horsemen reading The Sportsman, 30 Oct 1902, Farnborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. Source Historic England Archive. BB98/02592
About Us
What We Do

Who We Are

How We Are Funded

Contact Us

Careers

Volunteer with Historic England
About Us

Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England's spectacular historic environment.

Find out more

Mountbatten House (formerly Gateway House), Basing View, Basingstoke, the former headquarters for the paper merchants Wiggins Teape by Arup Associates. Listed at Grade II. © Historic England
Sign in
Manage my account

Sign out

TORBAY CINEMA

TORBAY CINEMA, TORBAY ROAD

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II*
List Entry Number:: 1208209
Date first listed:: 20-Feb-1991
List Entry Name:: TORBAY CINEMA
Statutory Address:: TORBAY CINEMA, TORBAY ROAD

User submitted image — Uploaded by Eddie Bairstow This photo may not represent the current condition of the site
View all

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II*
List Entry Number:: 1208209
Date first listed:: 20-Feb-1991
List Entry Name:: TORBAY CINEMA
Statutory Address 1:: TORBAY CINEMA, TORBAY ROAD

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: TORBAY CINEMA, TORBAY ROAD

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Torbay (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Non Civil Parish
National Grid Reference:: SX 88998 60650

Details

PAIGNTON

SX8960 TORBAY ROAD 1947-1/6/97 (South side) 20/02/91 Torbay Cinema

GV II*

Cinema. Licensed and officially opened 1912, but actually opened previously (Soundy-Bennett). Probably designed by Hyams and Hodgen of Paignton (documentation); contractor Percy Drewe of Paignton. Free Baroque style with Art Nouveau decorative details. MATERIALS: Flemish bond N Staffordshire brick with iron reinforcment, freestone dressings; slate roof concealed behind parapet. PLAN: Facing onto Torbay Road. Deep rectangular plan with an internal balcony. EXTERIOR: 3-storey 3-bay front. Centre bay canted inwards with pedimented gable projecting on very deep brackets. Bay flanked by wide pilaster strips with Ionic capitals some distance below eaves level; first floor bow window to foyer. Very deep moulded stone eaves cornice on modillion brackets with parapet above to outer bays. Platband above second floor windows of outer bays linked to central transom of bowed foyer window. Spectacular Art Nouveau doorway to lower foyer. Round-headed varnished timber architrave with triple egg moulding. Transom with 4-light fanlight above, made up of panes of bevelled glass. 2-leaf doors, glazed with bevelled panes, the outer bottom corners of each leaf infilled with varnished timber spandrels giving an overall oval shape to the entrance. Fine sinuous timber door handles fixed to copper plate. Doorway has steps up, divided by probably original brass and timber hand-rail, upper step mosaic Deep canopy across front and over doorway (not part of the original design) is supported on 2 slender reeded cast-iron columns. First-floor stone-mullioned and transomed 5-light foyer window above with 3 transoms, glazed with Art Nouveau stained glass. 3-light stone mullioned windows to outer bays, the first floor windows transomed. Windows in the same style to one bay of the returns. INTERIOR: The foyer on the ground floor has been somewhat altered but the original stairs to the upper foyer are intact with plain, closely-spaced varnished splat balusters with Art Nouveau motifs. Stained glass decorates the window of the upper foyer. In the auditorium the proscenium arch and the orchestra pit of a 21-piece orchestra have been altered; otherwise the interior is remarkably well-preserved. The auditorium has a 6-bay barrel ceiling with ribs supported on corbels which are decorated with heads in relief of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Junior, the latter in the headgear of Moses - heads said to have been added to the original design. Ceiling decorated with mouldings of fruit and foliage. Original Art Deco-style wall lights made at a local smith's shop (Mann). The pastel colours of the wall and ceiling decoration are said to have been unchanged since the cinema opened. Grilles on long walls from the original and unusually early air-conditioning system which filtered air through a plenum plant. System (except coal-fired boiler) said to be intact. Curved balcony frontal, recessed in the centre with original decoration. Private boxes at the rear of the balcony are still in use. Tip-up seats, reduced in number and re-arranged for smaller audiences, are said to be original but re-upholstered. Roof said to be iron A-frame trusses. HISTORY: A hotel on the site was demolished to make way for the cinema. The precise date at which it opened is unclear, in spite of a remarkable archive of documentation in the hands of the present owners. A request for a licence is said to have been made to the Local Authority as early as 1907 (Mann). The Paignton Picture House Co. (whose directors included Farrance Gillie), who ran the cinema (previously known as the Paignton Electric Picture Palace) and a film library, renting out film to other organisations, was incorporated on 15 April 1913. Agatha Christie was a regular user when she was living in Dartmouth (Mann) and the cinema is said to be the model for the 'Gaiety' cinema in her fiction. Paris Singer, who remodelled Oldway Mansion (qv) is said to have visited with Isadora Duncan: documentation shows that Singer sold the cinema company a grand piano. Atwell's book lists (without claiming to be comprehensive) 8 cinemas purpose-built before 1912 as being still in use, with 7 others converted to other uses. The earliest is the Electric, Portabello Road, 1907. An extremely well-preserved example of an early purpose-built cinema with an important archive of documentation. (Dissertation for College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth: Soundy-Bennett P: The Torbay Cinema, Paignton: 1990-; Atwell D: Cathedrals of the Movies: 1987-; Documentation and oral history provided by Mr John Mann, manager).

Listing NGR: SX8899860650

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 383865
Legacy System:: LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Atwell, D, Cathedral of the Movies: A History of British Cinemas and their Audiences, (1980)

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.