Reg No
12305026
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Technical
Original Use
Cinema
Date
1940 - 1945
Coordinates
240468, 164728
Date Recorded
19/05/2004
Date Updated
--/--/--
Detached single- or three-bay (seven-bay deep) double-height barrel-roofed cinema, built 1944, on a rectangular plan. In use, 1973. Now disused. Corrugated-iron-covered barrel roof behind parapet with no rainwater goods surviving on timber box eaves retaining cast-iron downpipes. Rendered reinforced wall to front (south) elevation with concrete or rendered coping to parapet; rendered surface finish (remainder) with rendered "bas-relief" piers. Paired square-headed central door openings with concrete step, and concealed dressings with cantilevered canopy framing glazed timber panelled double doors. Square-headed window openings with concrete sills, and concealed dressings framing fixed-pane steel fittings having horizontal glazing bars. Street fronted with concrete footpath to front.
A cinema erected to designs by Cecil Buggy (1919-78) representing an important component of the mid twentieth-century built heritage of County Kilkenny with the architectural value of the composition confirmed by such attributes as the rectilinear plan form; the canopied doors; the streamlined pilasters originally showing characteristic strip lighting; and the parapeted roof. A prolonged period of neglect notwithstanding, the elementary form and massing survive intact together with substantial quantities of the original fabric, including increasingly endangered steel fittings, thus upholding the character or integrity of a cinema making an imposing visual statement in Bohercrussia Street.