Former Morecambe Odeon Cinema, including shops to Euston Road

Summary

A cinema with attached shops (now all in retail use), opened in 1937, by William Calder Robson of Harry Weedon and Partners for Oscar Deutsch and the Odeon group of companies. Designed in a streamlined Moderne style, the striking exterior (mostly in brown brick) has complex massing including a slender round-ended tower with projecting flat roof and expressed high-level corridor. The circulation foyers are externally tiled in cream faience, with horizontal green stripes. The interior retains many original decorative finishes.

Reasons for Designation

The former Odeon cinema in Morecambe, a cinema of 1937 by William Calder Robson, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* the Morecambe Odeon is a striking, good-quality design with complex massing and streamlined and playful features characteristic of the Moderne style;

* it is a good example of later Odeon cinema design, evolved by William Calder Robson from the initial house style developed by Cecil Clavering and Robert Bullivant;

* the original design survives well overall, with a legible front-of-house plan, surviving back-of-house spaces (most notably the projector room), and many retained decorative features in plaster, timber and tiling.

History

Morecambe’s Odeon cinema was built in 1937, during a period of rapid expansion for the chain. The building cost £37,605 and seated 1,560 patrons, a typical capacity for new cinemas at the time. It was opened on 2 September. It included several shops to let, a feature also found on some other Odeons, which rarely included internal refreshment facilities.

The Odeon company was formed in 1930 by Oscar Deutsch. Between 1936 and 1939 Odeon opened 96 new cinemas in England, mostly in a distinctive streamlined Moderne style influenced by German Expressionism, and usually with an exterior mixing brown brick with cream tiling. This ‘house style’ had been developed by Cecil Clavering and Robert Bullivant in the Birmingham architect’s firm of Harry Weedon, one of two firms which produced most of Odeon’s designs (Weedon himself did not design any of the practice’s cinemas). William Calder Robson, an assistant architect, designed seven Odeons for the practice, including the one at Morecambe. Two others of his design survive, at Harrogate and Blackpool, and both are listed (National Heritage List for England (NHLE) entries 1203754 and 1225407, respectively).

Probably in the early 1950s, the cinema was altered for wider ratio film formats such as cinemascope, but with relatively little impact. The screen was brought forward of the proscenium arch and stage (supported at the top by metal rails fixed to the walls), and the projection and lighting equipment were altered to allow for variable masking.

The cinema was sold by Odeon to Classic Cinemas in December 1967. It finally closed as a cinema in February 1976, and soon afterwards it became a shop. The original black tiled pillars to the entrance were boxed in and the entrance apertures glazed. The auditorium floor and walls were overlaid with stud work, preserving most of the original features. Suspended ceilings were fitted in the auditorium and the double-height stalls foyer, and a partition added above the front of the circle to block off the space above the auditorium’s false ceiling. The stalls foyer’s decorative rubber floor is also thought to have been preserved below the new flooring. Losses included the bespoke doors and stair balustrades of the stalls foyer, and the original doors and paybox of the entrance foyer. The walls between the two foyers and the stalls were also opened out (retaining the structural columns), allowing direct access between the entrance foyer, stalls foyer and stalls. The stairs to the circle from the stalls foyer were blocked with a door.

Around 2002, telecommunications masts were erected on the top of the tower, concealed by screens painted in an imitation of brickwork, which has now (2025) faded. The shopfronts’ black tiling with green stripes was also painted, first grey and then red. Between 2016 and 2019, the shopfronts were overclad in pvc weatherboarding, and the Crittall windows were replaced in pvc to a different pattern. Since March 2022, the cinema entrance frontage (which was previously overclad in plywood) has also been weatherboarded in pvc.

Details

A cinema with attached shops (now all in retail use), opened in 1937, by William Calder Robson of Harry Weedon and Partners for Oscar Deutsch and the Odeon group of companies, in streamlined Moderne style.

MATERIALS: steel frame clad in brown brick, with cream, green and black faience, roofs of reinforced concrete and of felt, with some cast-iron rainwater goods.

PLAN: approximate U plan, with the auditorium aligned east-west and separated by a narrow yard from a parallel narrow range of shops to the south, and with a quadrant entrance foyer at the south-east and a north-east auditorium foyer with rounded angle.

EXTERIOR: a freestanding cinema on a corner site, with stepped double-height entrance foyer, taller double-height circulation foyer with two-storey operation and projection block above, a stepping and tapering auditorium with expressed staircases, high-level walkway and plenum towers, a round-ended tower and low two-storey row of shops, in a complex, carefully massed and expressionistic composition inspired by Schoffler, Shloenbach and Jacobi's Titania Palast, Berlin of 1928.

The fan-shaped entrance foyer is at the south-east corner, with five former entrances (now glazed) separated by black-tiled pillars (now overclad in pvc weatherboarding). The granolithic flooring extends beyond the entrances to the back-of-pavement, with a chequered strip towards its outer edge. Set back above the entrances, the upper stage of the foyer is in cream faience tiles with two thin green horizontal stripes. Five window openings between the stripes are boarded and (in 2025) covered by an advertising sign.

The east façade primarily comprises the circulation foyer (abutted at the left by the entrance foyer) and operations block. The circulation foyer has curved angles and is clad in the same cream tiles, with a black-tiled plinth with three thin projecting stripes (originally green, now painted white), three green stripes near the top, and a black tile coping. Cast-iron rainwater hoppers to the side returns also have horizontal stripes. Four windows at first-floor level flank a tall central stair window (all now boarded). Set back above this, the operation and projection block is in brick. The upper level is blind (with a later rendered area for signage) but the lower level has three windows, each of three lights with two horizontal glazing bars. This block is flanked by blind stair towers, with smaller turrets in the angle each having a square window at the top floor. A modern roof-access ladder rises at the left.

Set back again is the blind rear wall of the auditorium. At the top floor of the left stair tower is the semi-circular end of a cantilevered walkway, connecting to the main tower that is set further back and to the left. Where the walkway meets the main tower it widens with a quadrant at its left. The main tower rises the full height of the building and extends all the way to the southern building line, where its end is rounded. It has an overhanging flat roof, with a rendered signage area (now with a modern advertisement), and (now boarded) horizontal plenum grilles in the curved end of the upper level. The second and third floors each have an artificial-stone lintel spanning three small two-light windows (now concealed behind advertisements), and there is a first-floor string band. The angle between the main tower and stair tower has bands of projecting brick. Above the roof of the main tower is a modern lightweight construction screening telecommunications antennae, with faded painted brick pattern. To the right of the circulation foyer, the auditorium block has modelled angles, and a projecting exit stair which steps down in stages to meet the stair tower of the operations block, with original timber exit doors with horizontal mouldings, in a small porch in the angle with the circulation foyer.

The blind north wall of the auditorium steps down to the right. At the base the walls have two stepped recessed courses of brick. Projecting at the left, and stepping down to the left, is the north exit-stair tower with a rounded angle at its right. At the ground floor is a wide projecting concrete lintel spanning original doors and several small windows. To the right of the stair tower is a modern canopy projecting from the auditorium wall, with inserted doorway and store entrance, both with roller shutters. To the right of this the auditorium wall angles away, with slightly-projecting plenum tower abutting most of it, and one-and-two-storey projections with various grilles and small windows (some blocked). At the right is a three-storey back-stage tower, and a two-storey stair block.

The west wall is largely blind with some altered openings at the left. The upper four courses of brickwork to each element are in contrasting blue engineering brick.

The south wall includes the parade of five, two-storeyed shops. These have altered first-floor windows and shopfronts, with the majority of the recessed doorways now infilled with glazing, and the black tiling overpainted and now overclad in pvc weatherboarding. At the right-hand end the first floor engages with the tower’s curved end, while the ground floor continues (with concealed former exits), to meet the entrance foyer. Set back above the entrance foyer the stair tower has a tall window (now covered with pvc weatherboarding), and above this is the projecting walkway linking the main tower with the operation and projection block. Its windows have been removed and replaced with pvc weatherboarding. Set back above the shops, the south wall of the auditorium mirrors the north wall, but with more patterned rainwater hoppers.

INTERIOR: the interior has been converted for retail use with some opening-up but the principal plan form remains legible. This includes the entrance foyer, double-height circulation foyer accessing the stalls and circle, auditorium with large circle balcony, and stair and plenum towers, as well as operational spaces such as lavatories, rooms for generators and batteries, and projection room. Many original finishes and fixtures characteristic of the Odeon house style are understood to remain where they are concealed by modern partitions, suspended ceilings and floors. These include: textured-plaster walls and ceilings; patterned solid rubber and wood-block floors, original doors with small viewing panes under horizontal bars; stepped skirting boards; decorative plenum-ventilation grilles, and wall panelling.

The entrance foyer has a large, deep-stepped circular ceiling rose. The auditorium retains its original proscenium arch although not the stage. This is flanked by projecting five-bay openings with scalloped fronts and decorative timber screens masking ventilation chambers. The textured ceiling ascends in three steps, with each of the four bays having a wide, deep-moulded light-trough with grilled opening. Minor damage has occurred where each wire of the suspended ceiling is fixed to the original ceiling. The side wall decoration is a mixture of textured plaster, tiling and dado panelling. The circle front is tiled and the veneered balustrades survive well (with attached ashtrays). There are further decorative plenum grilles in the rear wall of the circle. The circulation foyer retains its columns and deep-moulded ceiling beams, and above the circle entrance the former suspended-letter ‘CIRCLE’ sign partially survives. The projection box retains early electrical panels and switches, and the circular holes in the ceiling for venting projector heat.

The shop-range interiors retain the wall tiling and granolithic flooring of some of the formerly-recessed doorways, but are otherwise devoid of features of interest.

Sources

Books and journals
Harwood, E, Picture Palaces, (1999), 10
Hartwell, C, Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Lancashire North, (2009), 464

Websites
Specialist cinema history website, accessed 06/12/2024 from https://www.chestercinemas.co.uk/odeon-cinema-morecambe/
Specialist cinema history website, accessed 06/12/2024 from https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/6067
Specialist Modernist architecture website, accessed 06/12/2024 from https://www.modernistbritain.co.uk/post/building/Odeon+Cinema+Morecambe/
Photograph of 1958 in Lancashire photographic archive, accessed 06/12/2024 from https://redrosecollections.lancashire.gov.uk/view-item?i=238970&WINID=1723649917070

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.