The Pavilion Theatre and surrounding raised terrace and steps

Details

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 20/05/2020


SZ 0890
768/12/10047

BOURNEMOUTH
WESTOVER ROAD
The Pavilion Theatre and surrounding raised terrace and steps

GV
II
Entertainment complex of theatre with ballroom and supper rooms, one of latter now used as public house. 1928-29 by G Wyville Home and Shirley Knight, winners of a competition in 1923 assessed by Sir Edwin Cooper; remodelled in 1934 and in the 1950s in the original style. Sir E Owen Williams was the consultant engineer.

A beaux arts composition in stripped classical style. Red brick with Empire stone dressings; pantiled roofs. The plan is of two halves on a steeply sloping site, with the theatre on two levels at the front, and the ballroom to the rear with the supper room and public house below reached by corridors and stairs to either side of the theatre.

Entrance to theatre and ballroom has three-bay front, with round-arched openings to front and renewed first-floor windows set between broad classical pilasters under deep stone cornice and parapet. Pavilions to either side raised in the 1950s in similar style. Roof surmounted by iron crestings. Behind it a flytower was raised in 1934 and rebuilt in the 1950s with bands of stonework. Side elevations retain some original windows with metal margin lights and fan-shaped tops, again set in three-bay composition between pilasters. Rear elevations with renewed windows under deep eaves cornice, the ground-floor public house with original metal fenestration under late C20 awnings.

The interiors survive very completely in a variety of styles reflecting the importance of Grecian and Egyptian influences in the late 1920s. Entrance hall reached via vestibule with original pendant lights and with plaque commemorating the opening by the Duke of Gloucester on 19 March 1929. The three-bay entrance hall has decorated terrazzo floor, dentilled cornice and paired Doric columns, and inner arcade with rounded moulded archways, now partly blocked by reception desk and office. Similar fluted mouldings to corridors at either side, which curved round and down to serve the theatre stalls and the bar and ballroom beyond. At either side of the entrance hall are open-well staircases which rise to the first-floor bar and circle; they have upswept timber handrails and metal balustrading, and are top-lit by Regency style circular skylights. First floor bar over entrance hall of three bays with circular ceiling mouldings.

The 1518-seat theatre is roughly square in plan and has a full-size stage and a circle, re-raked in 1934 to provide better sight-lines for plays. It is entered from `silence corridors' on both levels, with Egyptian-style mouldings to the cornices of the doors. The theatre itself is in a restrained early C19 style, with square columns to the rear and sides of the circle and a shallow groin vault with festoon decoration. The balcony front has a shallow roll moulding with fluted decoration, and the motif of the doors is repeated over the rounded and ribbed ante-proscenium, which conceals the pipes for the original Compton organ, which sits to the side of the stage and is reached via the organist's personal green room. Ballroom with richly moulded ceilings and pendant lights (renewed to original design in modern materials). Beneath it is the Lucullus Room, a restaurant, reached via staircases with iron arch-moulded balustrading. The Lucullus Room is entered via double doors between fluted Doric columns, and retains original wall decoration with shallow fluting and mirrors in an elegant moderne style which is advanced for its date. The ceiling with shallow recess defined by concave plaster moulding. Beyond it the larger restaurant is now a public house, with deep, double-height space surrounded by original mirrors with fan-shaped decoration set between broad piers with fluted tops. The ceiling similarly banded and with similar mouldings.

Around the Pavilion is a terrace with steps leading down to the Pleasure Gardens, which are on English Heritage's Gardens Register, and with which it forms an important entertainment ensemble. The Pavilion is an excellent example in good condition of a purpose-built multi-entertainment venue built to serve a major seaside resort. Other resorts do not have such a complete and complex example of this style and period. It was sympathetically extended and improved in the 1930s and 1950s, and remains remarkably homogenous given the variety of stylistic idioms it portrays.

Listing NGR: SZ0890890877

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

469019

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
The Builder in 22 March, (1929)

End of official list entry

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