Art Picture House
ART PICTURE HOUSE, KNOWSLEY STREET
Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places
Overview
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II
- List Entry Number:
- 1250829
- Date first listed:
- 12-Apr-1995
- List Entry Name:
- Art Picture House
- Statutory Address:
- ART PICTURE HOUSE, KNOWSLEY STREET
Location
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Images of England Project
- Date:
- 2000-05-21
- Reference:
- IOE01/01653/28
- Rights:
- © Ms Pamela Jackson. Source: Historic England Archive
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Discover moreOfficial list entry
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II
- List Entry Number:
- 1250829
- Date first listed:
- 12-Apr-1995
- List Entry Name:
- Art Picture House
- Statutory Address 1:
- ART PICTURE HOUSE, KNOWSLEY STREET
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
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.
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
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.
Location
- Statutory Address:
- ART PICTURE HOUSE, KNOWSLEY STREET
The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.
- District:
- Bury (Metropolitan Authority)
- Parish:
- Non Civil Parish
- National Grid Reference:
- SD 80343 10591
Details
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
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
- Legacy System number:
- 433311
- Legacy System:
- LBS
Legal
This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.
Map
This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. This copy shows the entry on 24-Jun-2026 at 16:34:12.
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