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Report - - The Elysium Theatre, Swansea July 2014 | Theatres and Cinemas | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - The Elysium Theatre, Swansea July 2014

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dweeb

28DL Regular User
Regular User
Visited with CatV on a bit of a Wales trip...

Not much info on this one, Cinema treasures is quite vague compared to most of the cinemas they have documented

A very impressive high fronted building at the top end of Swansea High Street just seconds away from the main line station. The Elysium Cinema opened on 11th April 1914 in a building which was part used as the Dock Workers Hall. It was designed by the architectural firm Ward & Ward of the Strand, London. It closed as a cinema in 1960 and went over to use as a bingo hall, which had closed by 1994. It has been boarded up for many years now.

This cinema/theatre is the one Swansea building of entertainment that never seems to get mentioned or anyone knows much about. Any info would be of great interest.


Been here a couple of times before but it's always been a favourite of mine, I could rummage in the piles of pigeon crap covered tat for hours. A relatively unspoilt example of a theatre/music hall which evolved into a cinema, and then the usual transition into Bingo.

A crawl through a hatch revealed a whole section of the building I had never seen before, which was the "Swansea and District Labour Hall and Institute" which was very reminiscent to a social club. Again the interior was very unspoilt and had a beautiful wood and glass corridor separating smaller rooms, leading to a large bar area with a stage. Interestingly the frosted glass windows had been installed at some point to modernise the room, and hid the most beautiful stained glass windows, perfectly preserved behind!

As I had been before I spent most of my time crawling through the cubbies to see what I could find, I didn't expect to happen across a third of the building which had until now remained unexplored!

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Ojay

Admin
Staff member
Admin
The social club bit is win mate, shame there are very few examples left of these nowadays
 

PCWOX

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
A1 this. Looks like loads of nooks and crannies were discovered. Cool :thumb
 

scruffyherrbert

28DL Member
28DL Member
Thanks for the update, nice to see the place is still standing and with roof intact. Still hoping the owner will get in touch one day and negotiate a rescue of the machines, be a shame if some of them rotted away and never made it into my care :)
 

Wevsky

A Predisposed Tourist
Regular User
Looks mashed to buggery but youve done well with it and there's some nice features left
 

darn

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Great work :thumb I can't believe you stumbled across that on your THIRD visit as well, must have been well hidden? A blast from the past indeed... I could go through the pigeon shit letters as well, all the old stuff like that fascinates me!
 
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