The Ritz Cinema, England

The glitz and glamour of the Ritz Cinema glory days are long gone. This abandoned entertainment venue is a mere shadow of its former self. Once a bustling venue for movie lovers, it now stands abandoned and shuttered. Like many small-town cinemas, this old-fashioned venue fell out of favour with modern audiences.

I visited the Ritz in the summer of 2020. At that time the front door was open, and builders were working inside, preparing to strip out the stall-level seating. Kindly, they let me shoot during their lunchbreak!

History of the abandoned Ritz Cinema

The Ritz Cinema opened in 1930s. Like many cinemas of the time, the architectural style is Art Deco. In fact, as cinema dates to the latter part of this period, it falls into a subcategory called Streamline Moderne, or informally “modern Art Deco”. Some key features are the interior colour scheme, featuring more subtle colour palettes. Likewise, the dominance of horizontal lines is another signature feature of Streamline Moderne. This distinctive style was also adopted by the Odeon theatres that were being built around the UK contemporaneously.

During the early years of operation, the Ritz was a pretigious state-of-the-art cinema with modern projection technology. The auditorium had seating for over 1200 people, split across stalls and the circle. Originally, there would have been plush red folding seats on both the upper and lower floors.

The cinema had a particularly narrow proscenium (on a theatre stage, this is the area in front of the curtain; in this case, it refers to the area surrounding the cinema screen). In later years, this proved problematic when CinemaScope anamorphic format movies became popular in the early 1950s. This new widescreen format was nearly twice as wide as the previously common Academy format. To accommodate this format and give a true widescreen effect, the top masking of the Ritz Cinema screen had to be significantly lowered.

The Ritz cinema closed in the late 1950s, and it was converted into a bingo hall. At this time the stall-level seating was removed and bingo tables installed. Eventually, the bingo hall closed down after an impressive 60 years of operation. The building has stood abandoned ever since.

An uncertain future for this historic Abandoned Art Deco cinema

In 2020, during my visit, there were workers on site taking 3D laser surveys. Soon after, the stall seating was removed. It appeared renovation would start, but then everything ground to a halt. Recently, the site has been put up for auction in an attempt to find a new buyer to breathe life back into this historic building.

The future of the Ritz Cinema still seems uncertain.