Didcot Art Deco

A little Art Deco gem and a little tragedy is Didcot's New Coronet. Built in 1933 and, as you can see, now a Bingo Hall. When I first moved here in 1987 I used to live within a hundred yards or so of this place and every morning on my way to work I would round the corner, stop my motor bike at this roundabout and have a little sad moment to myself. One morning I stopped as usual and was amazed and delighted to see the place transformed; the peeling prewar paint and faded woodwork was bright, renewed and re-polished, the brass work shone with a gleam that would gladden the eye of any doorman, the awful "Bingo!" sign that defaces the facade had been removed and the display cases were resplendent with 1930's movie stills. For a few short but happy hours I thought my cherished little fantasy had become reality and the town's long dead picture house was reborn. Sadly disillusionment was not long in coming, by evening the truth was out - it had merely been dressed up to feature as the backdrop in an episode of Poirot. The following day it was a bingo hall again.


The reason I am so nostalgic for little old cinemas such as this goes back to the 1960's. My father had been a film lover since his childhood before and during the War and passed it on to us as we grew up, the cinema was one of the only places we went out to as a family. In addition my grandmother worked as a cook in the restaurant in the grand old "Majestic" cinema in Aberdeen and between the book of free tickets she gave us each week, the Saturday morning kids club at the Odeon (showing old 1930's serials like Flash Gordon, Captain Marvel, The Bat Man etc along with more recent stuff from the Children's Film Foundation - which all seemed to star Jack Wild - and even 60's classics such as Peter Cushing as Dr Who, no competition to Patrick Troughton at home on TV, and Tommy Steel as Jack Shepherd) and frequent trips with my father, a huge part of my childhood was spent in these old picture houses, sitting in the dark in what, to the diminutive edition of me of that time, seemed an enormous silver screen, drinking in the experience. Aberdeen at that time, like any other British city I'm sure, seemed to be richly endowed with cinemas. Each showed a rolling program of shorts and main features and you could buy a ticket, come in and go out at any point. It was commonplace to start watching a movie well into the story and just wait for the program to cycle round so you could see the earlier part - I managed to see any number of films of that period in my very own non-linear narrative versions! But even as I was revelling in all this I was all too aware it was a dying world. Sometimes it seemed like every week another old friend would close down to reopen the following week, if it was lucky, as a Bingo Hall - a phrase delivered by my father amidst an accompanying escort of expletives as he announced the fact from behind a copy of the Press & Journal. Two factors were killing these places off, one I was aware of, TV, the other I didn't learn about till much later - the devastating lingering effect of the War. It's still not generally appreciated but Hitler was the final nail in the coffin of most of these old People's Palaces. During the war, with resources so short, it became illegal to do any but the most basic and essential repair or redecoration to cinemas and theatres. In the aftermath, with the country all but bankrupt, the ban continued right through the periods of Austerity and Utility etc By the '60's cinemas were mostly dirty, decaying flea pits compared to their glory days, architectural Miss Havishams in their faded grandeur. With the restrictions lifted the owners were faced with twenty years of neglect to put right ...and all to try and tempt in declining audiences - the reinvention of cinema with Blockbusters and multiplexes was a decade or more away, who can blame those who chose to cut their losses, reduce their overheads and either pull them down to make way for offices and car parks or cash in on the Bingo craze.

So every time I come past this place I feel that little wistful cloud of childhood nostalgia and am aware of a still tangled little knot of loss. I cannot hear the phrase "Bingo Hall" without adding a silent and obscene adjective.