Regent Cinema
REGENT CINEMA, BROAD 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:
- 1385093
- Date first listed:
- 05-Oct-2000
- List Entry Name:
- Regent Cinema
- Statutory Address:
- REGENT CINEMA, BROAD STREET
Location
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Images of England Project
- Date:
- 2007-09-18
- Reference:
- IOE01/16060/02
- Rights:
- © Mr Steve Beck. Source: Historic England Archive
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Discover moreOfficial list entry
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II
- List Entry Number:
- 1385093
- Date first listed:
- 05-Oct-2000
- List Entry Name:
- Regent Cinema
- Statutory Address 1:
- REGENT CINEMA, BROAD 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:
- REGENT CINEMA, BROAD STREET
The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.
- District:
- Dorset (Unitary Authority)
- Parish:
- Lyme Regis
- National Grid Reference:
- SY 33992 92106
Details
LYME REGIS
SY3392 BROAD STREET
864/3/10004 Regent Cinema
05-OCT-00
GV II
Cinema, built in 1937 for D W Hardy (Lyme Regis Cinema Co.), to the designs of William Henry Watkins (1878-1964). Rendered brick. Stadium plan behind spacious foyer and shop.
EXTERIOR: Rendered facade in subdued classical style, set back from the line of adjacent buildings to form a forecourt. Entrance to the cinema ranged right with three sets of glazed double doors with original horizontal glazing bars. Double-fronted shop unit to the left. Symmetrical upper storey with central section breaking forward and rising above flanking lower sections, this central part having three round-headed windows separated by pilasters with Art Deco capitals. Small pane glazing in neo-Georgian style. Displayed above the windows is the name of the cinema - REGENT. `Pseudo-triglyphs' at attic level below cornice. Flanking sections with one vertical slit window either side. Auditorium roof rises above foyer fore-building.
INTERIOR: Spacious foyer leading to Art Deco style double-height stadium-type auditorium (one where there is no balcony but which has stepped seating rows at the rear). Entrance to the auditorium by way of two vomitories. Auditorium arranged as a series of bays dictated by the regularly spaced ceiling beams. The last bay cascades towards the proscenium in curved moulded plaster to reveal undulating vertical mouldings, probably originally designed to employ the `Brenograph' system of colour-change lighting. Dado enlivened by continuous horizontal plaster moulding and wave-like motif.
ANALYSIS: A little-altered example of a small town super-cinema of the 1930s. Watkins was an important Bristol-based cinema architect, most of whose surviving work is in the neo-classical style. The auditorium here is a rare example of his dexterity with more moderne idioms, and it is an unusual and convincing example of light architecture in a small cinema.
SOURCES:
David Ewins, `W H Watkins, a Bristol architect', in Picture House, the journal of the Cinema Theatre Association, no.5, 1984, pp.22 and 29,
Listing NGR: SY3399292106
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
- Legacy System number:
- 485554
- Legacy System:
- LBS
Sources
Books and journals
Ewins, D, Picture House in 5, (1984), 22, 29
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 10:08:12.
Download a full scale map (PDF)End of official list entry
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