Survey Data

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

--/--/--


Description

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.

Appraisal

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.