82346

 

II*  

Designated  

17/03/1999  

04/07/2007  

Celynen Collieries Workmen's Memorial Hall, including forecourt wall and gates  

 

Caerphilly  

Newbridge  

 

Newbridge  

320739  

196737  

 

Near corner with Meredith Terrace, set back from street, with C20 link to Workmen's Institute.  

 

 

Bears date 1924. Architect Evan DT Jenkins, builder Ewart Evans of Newport. Opened Saturday March 14, 1925. A dancehall on the ground floor has a combined cinema/theatre above.  

Tall frontage facing High Street in pressed red brick with yellow brick and bathstone dressings. Side and rear elevations in local stone also with yellow brick dressings; hipped slate roof with large louvred ventilator. Three bay front of three apparent storeys. Narrow central bay has flanking pilasters which run up above parapet level; lunette with tall keystone and leaded glazing with stained glass panels; segmental head to doorway obscured by later porch. Outer bays have tall windows with cross glazing; pilasters to ends. Sides have camber-headed windows with yellow brick dressings; rear (where ground is higher) has broad doorway to rear of stage, and blocked windows at ground level. Front area bounded by low wall with brick piers and decorative iron gates and railings.  

Lobby with marble war memorial tablet, paybooth, and flanking steps up to cinema. Dance hall sprung floor, original ceiling preserved above later suspended ceiling. Two stages, with steps between. Original grilles above windows. Above dance-hall is cinema with high quality and exceptionally well-preserved auditorium. Lobby with art-deco style paybooth. Auditorium in classical style. Segmental ceiling with classicising ribs and decorative vents. Proscenium arch with gilded bead-and-reel, acanthus, and Greek key mouldings; Egyptian motif to tympanum above. Backstage area has screen frame, and theatre machinery. Body of auditorium has acanthus cornice, band with roundels above band of Vitruvian wave moulding. At lower level, oak panelling. To sides, round-headed windows with fanlights and screens with Islamic style piercing. Between windows, and flanking proscenium, painted roundels with scenes of heavy manual labour, below these, later (?) panels with depictions of Boy Scout movement. To rear, gallery with enriched bow front; panelling and enrichments also to underside of gallery. Seats still in situ in gallery, stalls seats currently stored in gallery. Behind gallery, projection booth with 2 mid-C20 sound projectors, and partly extant RCA Photophone valve amplifier. The interior of the building retains virtually all its original doors and many fittings.  

Graded II* for its unusually high-quality and well-preserved cinema interior, amongst the best interiors of any workingmen's hall in Wales. Group Value with adjacent Workmen's Institute and th Church of St Paul opposite.