What a corker of a cinema! Up until we stopped off to check this one out our trip was definitely shaping up to be a bit sub-par but this place was just that little bit of epic we needed to make the many previous failures worthwhile!
The cinema itself (and yeh it is a cinema not a theatre) reminded me very much of Streatham with its largely bingo'd out ground floor yet lovely stack of boxes and epic plasterwork detail once you got up to the circle. The circle here was just huge! almost like two circles in one. Then of course the row of Corinthian columns down each side separating seats from the aisle must be fairly unique too. It definitely stands out from the crowd.
Known as 'Greens Playhouse' after George Green the owner of several other similar cinemas in Scotland it is considered the best surviving example of a John Fairweather designed house. It opened in 1931 and squeezed in 3,116 seats which made it the second biggest cinema in the country at the time.
John Fairweather said of the building
"In this amusement business the public demands progressive change. From silent to talking pictures, from black-and-white to colour photography, from small downtown 300-seaters to 4,000 seaters. Car parks, cafes, dance halls, these things will all become part and parcel of the cinema of the future.
My new cinema at Ayr, besides having a car park, will have a flat roof on which gyroplanes may land. It is my belief that the cinema is definitely establishing itself as the centre of social life in every town”
Sadly after checking the loft we could find little evidence of said gyro planes!
The auditorium was definitely the highlight but there was also a bit to see in the projectionists area even if the projectors themselves appeared to be long gone.. The circle was accessed by a nice staircase but had little in the way of a bar area or anything like that. Getting a photo of the nice stained glass window and staircase was actually surprisingly difficult as it was so cramped at the front of house! One interesting aspect was getting up to the loft via a ladder that popped out to one corner of the proscenium and gave a quite unique vantage point. A few doors were locked but I think we got to all the main areas.
8.5 out of 10 i think. Not quite as good as Streatham mainly because there wasn't an awful lot to see behind the scenes but much better than your average bingo closure!
The cinema itself (and yeh it is a cinema not a theatre) reminded me very much of Streatham with its largely bingo'd out ground floor yet lovely stack of boxes and epic plasterwork detail once you got up to the circle. The circle here was just huge! almost like two circles in one. Then of course the row of Corinthian columns down each side separating seats from the aisle must be fairly unique too. It definitely stands out from the crowd.
Known as 'Greens Playhouse' after George Green the owner of several other similar cinemas in Scotland it is considered the best surviving example of a John Fairweather designed house. It opened in 1931 and squeezed in 3,116 seats which made it the second biggest cinema in the country at the time.
John Fairweather said of the building
"In this amusement business the public demands progressive change. From silent to talking pictures, from black-and-white to colour photography, from small downtown 300-seaters to 4,000 seaters. Car parks, cafes, dance halls, these things will all become part and parcel of the cinema of the future.
My new cinema at Ayr, besides having a car park, will have a flat roof on which gyroplanes may land. It is my belief that the cinema is definitely establishing itself as the centre of social life in every town”
Sadly after checking the loft we could find little evidence of said gyro planes!
The auditorium was definitely the highlight but there was also a bit to see in the projectionists area even if the projectors themselves appeared to be long gone.. The circle was accessed by a nice staircase but had little in the way of a bar area or anything like that. Getting a photo of the nice stained glass window and staircase was actually surprisingly difficult as it was so cramped at the front of house! One interesting aspect was getting up to the loft via a ladder that popped out to one corner of the proscenium and gave a quite unique vantage point. A few doors were locked but I think we got to all the main areas.
8.5 out of 10 i think. Not quite as good as Streatham mainly because there wasn't an awful lot to see behind the scenes but much better than your average bingo closure!
