RITZ CINEMA

RITZ CINEMA, SOUTH 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:: 1385108
Date first listed:: 05-Oct-2000
List Entry Name:: RITZ CINEMA
Statutory Address:: RITZ CINEMA, SOUTH STREET

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Date:: 2007-08-27
Reference:: IOE01/16454/22
Rights:: © Mr David Jefferson. Source: Historic England Archive

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1385108
Date first listed:: 05-Oct-2000
List Entry Name:: RITZ CINEMA
Statutory Address 1:: RITZ CINEMA, SOUTH STREET

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.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

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.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: RITZ CINEMA, SOUTH STREET

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Derbyshire
District:: Erewash (District Authority)
Parish:: Non Civil Parish
National Grid Reference:: SK 46519 41577

Details

ILKESTON

SK4641NE SOUTH STREET 1774/7/10008 Ilkeston 05-OCT-00 (East side) Ritz Cinema

GV II

Former Ritz cinema. 1938 by Reginald William Gaze Cooper of Nottingham. Brick with contrasting area of glazed faience tile cladding surrounding main entrance and on tower feature. Roof hidden from street elevations. Wedge-shaped plan, incorporating shop premises on South Street facade.

EXTERIOR: Composition in moderne styling influenced by contemporary `Odeon' cinemas, derived from German examples of the twenties. Streamlined effect in large window above entrance achieved by use of exaggerated transoms. Rounded glazed stair tower turning corner on left of entrance, tower `fin' feature rising above adjacent roofs on right with balancing corner also rounded, incorporating streamlined windows at ground and first floor levels. Channelled brickwork on upper part of fin. Canopy over entrance continues around right-hand corner (profile altered). False screen wall above lock-up shop with advertising display panel and four supporting linear symmetrical concrete mouldings.

INTERIOR: Entrance foyer with three sets of original double doors to auditorium. Long double-height auditorium narrowing at stage end with fibrous plaster decoration on walls and ceiling in both streamlined moderne and Art Deco styling. Ante-proscenium splay walls carry three bands of elaborate Art Deco plasterwork (separated by mouldings) to conceal ventilation extract ducts. These bands are extended back as streamlining (derived from Erich Mendelsohn's Universum Cinema, Berlin, of 1928) to a false proscenium. Upper part of auditorium walls decorated in staggered panels with Art Deco mouldings loosely based on Chinoiserie design in Berlin theatres of the twenties by Oscar Kaufmann. Ceiling above ante-proscenium splay decorated with radiating panels of Art Deco fibrous plasterwork. Remaining ceiling treated as a descending sequence of coves with more fibrous plaster decoration. Balcony soffit has coved cornices for lighting and further Art Deco style fibrous plaster panels. Unusually spacious vomitory (with streamlined handrails) in balcony, divided to form entrance and exit routes. Two sets of original doors from upper foyer into vomitory. For bingo operation the original raked stalls floor has been replaced by two flat terraces for tables and fixed bench seating, likewise new suspended lighting fixtures installed. However, original seating survives in the circle, and the original offices and projection suite also survive.

ANALYSIS: Recommended as a remarkably complete example of a fine cinema of the 1930s, the exterior `show' elevations an exercise in converging mass and streamlining in the `Odeon' manner, the interior with much Art Deco fibrous plasterwork. Reginald Cooper is recognised as one of the most important provincial architects working the cinema genre, and this is perhaps his finest surviving work. It became a bingo hall after June 1968.

SOURCES: Allen Eyles, Reginald W Cooper of Nottingham', in Picture House, no. 8, Spring 1986, pp.16-25 Richard Gray, Cinemas in Britain, London, Lund Humphries, 1996, p.113

Listing NGR: SK4651941577

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:: 485570
Legacy System:: LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Gray, R, Cinemas in Britain: One Hundred Years of Cinema Architecture, (1996), 113
Eyles, A, 'Picture House' in Number 8, (1986), 16-25

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.