Thirsk is a town in North Yorkshire. We’d never visited before so dropped in on our way back up from Knaresborough and Harrogate.

The Clock Tower in the market place was decorated for Remembrance Day:-

I spotted the Ritz Cinema:-

And this nice bridge over the Cod Beck:-

Wow! Just wow!

My jaw dropped when I turned a corner in Harrogate and found this:-

This must be one of the most stunning examples of Art Deco cinema architecture in the UK.  Most 1930s Odeon cinemas were fine illustrations of Art Deco but this has just about everything. Thin stepped tower with deco fonted lettering on the word ‘Cinema’, the canopy, the cream and green curve above it leading into the curved cream tower with thin line of windows and green streamlining at top, rule of three in the windows on the brick portion.

Side view. Look at those windows and green detailing below roofline:-

The curved tower is beautiful:-

By the door on the cinema’s wall is this plaque outlining its history. It’s even been featured on a stamp:-

In the centre of Ayr there is a statue of Scotland’s bard Robert Burns. I referred to it in my post showing the Odeon Cinema there. Naturally enough the statue is in Burns Statue Square:-

Another Burns related place of interest in Ayr is the Tam O’Shanter Inn, the oldest pub/restaurant in the town I believe. Tam O’Shanter is perhaps Burns’ best known poem. The inn is from where Douglas Graham, the inspiration for Tam, set off on the journey which the poem chronicles:-

I have already noted the Odeon Cinema in Ayr. Apparently the Gaiety Theatre also used to show films. Checking the Scottish cinemas website I now see that one of the buildings I featured here, was also a cinema, the Orient.

While we were in Ayr I also found the former Green’s Playhouse, in Boswell Park, once the second biggest cinema in Scotland, which opened in 1931 as a replacement for an earlier cinema which had burnt down.

Entrance:-

Roofline:-

Detail:-

By the seaside, on the appropriately named Pavilion Road, is the former Pavilion Cinema, which opened in 1911, has been a ballroom and a nightclub but is now a children’s play centre:-

Art Deco cinema in Ayr. Statue of Robert Burns to right. Memorial to Colonial Wars to left.

Apparently this is the first true Odeon to be built in Scotland. Sadly as the following two photos show it is now somewhat in need of care and attention.

Odeon Cinema, upper portion:-

The Forum. Stepped roof-line, streamlining, rule of three in windows (disappointingly eyes poked out.)

Sadly no longer a cinema.

I featured this ex-cinema here.

Last March when visiting the antiques shop(s) now house dnsid ethe building I took these photos of the detail of the two tower portions:-

The former Rex Cinema is a stunning Art Deco building – in that blocky institutional style favoured by government buildings and dictators – in Coalville, Leicestershire. After ceasing to be a cinema it became a Dunelm Mill but that too has shut.

Frontage:-

This view shows how closely located is the Rex to the Palace Cinema – also Deco:-

This former cinema (on Jackson Street in Coalville) but now a Bingo Hall, screams deco.

Horizontals, verticals, friezes:-

Frontage:-

Detail of elegant deco frieze just below roofline and side scrolls:-

Frontage from left:-

Windows and scrolls:-

Small window:-

A beautiful piece of Art Deco in Rhyl, North Wales. The former Odeon Theatre in Rhyl is now a bingo hall. From reverse shows horizontals, verticals, curves, a canopy and rule of three in windows (whose eyes have sadly been put out.)

High Art Deco style here. Curved corner, streamlining in the brick:-

Entrance, canopy and white cladding:-

Full frontage (stitch of two photos):-

Detail. Note rule of three in the small windows here:-