Through door number two...

Unless you've spent time in the shop units at the front of the Regal, this is probably a doorway you've never seen before. Up on the top floor, this new arch now connects the rooms on the right with the rooms on the left. Similar doorways will connect the middle floor too, increasing the usability of the space as you'll be able to access these rooms directly from the cinema itself.

As you can see from the picture, this isn't the first time that there has been a doorway here. The large lintel across the door makes it very obvious, and before the doorway was knocked through you could see the outline of the previous door in the plasterwork.

Whilst we're showing architectural features in the shop units, here's another you might not have seen before; an old fireplace. Despite the dust and dirt it's in very good condition, and pre-dates the cinema's construction, belonging to the house that originally stood on the site.

This fireplace is in the lefthand shop (as you look at it from the street). There was once a matching one in the right had shop, but although the angled wall of the chimney breast and the slab on the floor remain, the fireplace itself disappeared years ago.

We found a few odds and ends underneath the floorboards in these rooms. Our favourite are a little cigarette box and card, in excellent condition, which date to 1937. They were probably dropped there by the workmen building the cinema as they converted the old houses into rentable shop spaces, and have sat undisturbed there ever since.

More in-restoration photographs coming soon, including an entire post dedicated to pictures of scaffolding! Which I promise will be more interesting than I'm making it sound here...

Regal Advent Calendar - Merry Christmas!

Greetings all! It's nearly December, so to share the Christmas spirit with you, we've got a small surprise for you. On our twitter feed @RegalTenburyHLF we'll be opening an imaginary door on our Regal advent calendar every day from the first to the twenty-fourth of December! Behind those doors you'll find Christmassy quotes from Christmassy films, hopefully ready to put you all into a most Christmassy spirit.

To join in, just follow our twitter feed. The advent updates will appear every day at 1pm. You can find all of the advent calendar posts together by searching for the hashtag #RegalAdvent (click on the hashtag to search).

The picture at the top of this post is of a piece of film reel from the Regal's own Christmas history. It's the short few seconds that would have played before film previews on the run up to Christmas.

We hope you enjoy our advent calendar. We think we've covered all the great Christmas films, but if you think we've missed one then please let us know!

Mystery film: 3 - revealed!

You'd like me to reveal this week's mystery film?

As you wish.

It seemed inconcievable that there were no guesses over the weekend, and I wondered if you'd fallen foul of one of the classic blunders (obviously not the ones about land wars in Asia or going up against Sicilians). But obviously someone took a miracle pill this morning and all wasn't lost, as we got some guesses before lunchtime. The film was, of course, the classic Princess Bride! Well done to Stephen on twitter and Duncan on facebook.

As it's December by the end of this week, we'll be starting on the Christmas films for our next mystery installments.

Until then... have fun storming the castle!

And I promise not to badly paraphrase the key quotes from the mystery film next time.

Mystery film: 3

We're back this week with another mystery film; to celebrate the greats of film history, we're taking iconic scenes from films and putting them up onto our miniature Regal screen. All you have to do is tell me what film they're from. The projectionist in our hand-drawn Regal doesn't seem to be very good at focussing the lens in the projector as the picture looks rather blurry... I'm sure you'll manage to guess the film anyway!

 

You know how it works by now: post your guesses either here in the comments, on twitter or on our facebook page.

I'll put up the answer on Monday, and credit all the correct guessers then.

Enjoy!

Behind door number one...

If you've been to the Regal before, have you ever wondered what was behind this door?

 

In case you've not been to the Regal before, it's a door at the top left of the auditorium (as you look into it from the front). The writing on the door says "NO EXIT" in gold, art deco capitals, and above the door you can see the outline of where a brass sign used to say the same.

So what's behind this mystery door? Well, I can show you!

 

 

That's right. It's... a room!

Well, of a sort. Although it looks like a room from this angle, in fact it's more like a very small covered courtyard. The back wall stops just about where the red pelmet starts in this picture (can you see the sliver of blueishness?) and from there to the height of the auditorium it's open on that one side. Not much of an opening though - the building next door is only about a half a metre away!

You can see a green downpipe in the corner beyond the doorway too. You should recognise that from the 'True Colour's post.

This room or courtyard is getting a new lease of life in the renovation process. The odd little space will become part of the ladies toilets, providing a washroom area for the new facilities.

I've been promised they'll put a proper roof on it first, though.

Object of the Week 3: Revealed!

We've had lots of correct guesses this week from all over the web, so well done to TC from Artrix, Stephen and Ian on twitter, David on facebook and Beaver on the blog, all of whom knew it was a film splicing machine, for joining together pieces of film. Or, as TC put it: "It's a splicy film reel fixy togethery machine!"

This is another picture of it, this time with the handle lifted up. You can see the little notches in the centre of the plate; these would have allowed the projectionist to perfectly align the two pieces of film so that the join was straight. The roll on the right hand side of the picture is tape, very much like sellotape but designed specially for sticking film together. 

Tools like these are still used in cinemas that show film on projectors. This one was still being used to join together film reels in the Regal right up until the closure for restoration.

Thanks to everyone who took part; we'll have another mystery film for you to mull over this weekend.

Object of the Week 3: Return of the Object

Welcome to another addition of Object of the Week. We've found some pretty cool things whilst we were taking everything out of the Regal to prepare the building for the restoration work, so every other Friday I hope to be able to show you something from the cinema and give you the weekend to figure out what it is. On Monday I'll let you know the answer. Feel free to post your guesses in the comments here, or send them via twitter. Correct guessers will be appropriately praised in Monday's post!


Here's this week's object. Lots of possibilities here, I think... looking forward to hearing your ideas.

What is it?

If you've not yet added your voice to our survey of film history then now is the time to do so. By answering four very quick questions you can help us to shape the exhibition in the Regal. What are you waiting for? Go do it now!

Mystery film: 2 - revealed!

That didn't seem to prove to be too much of a challenge for you! Well done to our correct guessers, this week from twitter; Ian, who knew it was a Star Wars film, and to Stephen who correctly identified it as Star Wars IV: A New Hope.

We'll be back to the mystery film again next week; look out for another object from the Regal collection this Friday for this weekend's guessing game.

True Colours

Welcome to the second set of photographs from inside the Regal during its restoration project!

Today I'll be showing you some photographs that reveal some original colour schemes from around the cinema.

First up are the walls in the auditorium. If you saw last week's wide auditorium shot then you'll remember that there were some discoloured patches on the back walls, behind the chairs. These haven't been made by the contractors; this is the way it was left last time it was repainted.

This close-in shot shows you some of the detailing of the paint. Directly under the yellow we see today was a browner colour. Underneath that is a deeper, more reddish-brown. You can also see that the outlining of the block structure with black lines was done on the previous light brown surface too. 

It's possible that the light brown colour was originally lighter, closer to today's yellow in colour, but was stained by cigarette smoke and dust in the auditorium. You can certainly see the dirt and staining on the mural in other places in the room.

You can see on those pictures too that they didn't quite manage to paint in all of the block joins with black lines. If you look at the wide shot from last week you might spot a couple more places where these lines are missing too.

These are two very exciting pictures of a water downpipe! They're from a part of the cinema that you've probably not seen before... more on that in another post. What they do show very well is the green colour of the original rainwater goods. All of the drainpipes would have been this colour of green originally; flecks of this colour are still visible on some of the repainted pipes, showing through the modern black.  You can see these pipes are rather dirty, but they're probably very close to the original colour; they're fairly well protected from the elements and probably haven't been bleached lighter very much by sunshine or rain.

That's it for today! Plenty more to come still...

We hope you're enjoying getting to see behind the scenes at the cinema during this exciting time. If there's ever anything you'd like us to keep an eye open for whilst we're in there snapping away do let us know - if we can take a photo of it, we will!

Mystery film: 2

We're back this week with another mystery film; to celebrate the greats of film history, we're taking iconic scenes from films and putting them up onto our miniature Regal screen. All you have to do is tell me what film they're from. The projectionist in our hand-drawn Regal doesn't seem to be very good at focussing the lens in the projector as the picture looks rather blurry... I'm sure you'll manage to guess the film anyway.

This week I've given the Regal a little colouring in. I don't think it'll make it any easier (or harder) for you to guess this week's film, though!

Post your guesses either here in the comments, on twitter or on our facebook page.

I'll put up the answer on Monday, and credit all the correct guessers then.

Enjoy!

Spot the Difference

Today I'm bringing you the first of the pictures from inside the Regal during the restoration work! So that you can spot the changes, I'll include a picture of the same view from before the work started as well as one as it is now.

Other than the fact I stepped a bit further forwards to take the second picture, there's a few more obvious changes starting to happen!

As you can see, the chairs on the left and right side of the auditorium have been removed (they're being safely stored during this phase of the project and will be replaced later) and the central seats have been covered over with plastic sheeting. This is all so that the scaffolding, which you can see in the bottom of the shot, can be erected, allowing the contractors access to the roof. Replacing the old roof is one of the first major pieces of work to be done. The black plastic sheeting that covers the centre and right parts of the upper floor area will also cover the left hand side before the roof work begins.

You can see some lights sticking up out of the ground beside the aisles; these were the lights that were attached to the seats and lit the steps down into the auditorium. They've been left in place during the work because they will be remaining in the cinema after the work is complete.

You can also see some patches of different colours on the walls at the back of the auditorium, behind where the back row would have been. I'll be showing you a better picture of that in another post, but  even from this distance the areas where the yellow paint hasn't covered stand out.

There'll be more photos from inside the cinema to come soon, including a reveal of what's behind one of the doors at the back of the auditorium, some original paintwork colours and a new doorway!

Object of the Week 2: Revealed

Thank you to everyone who took part in this week's object of the week!

Credit for the correct answer goes to Stephen on Facebook and Miles on Twitter, who guessed that it is indeed an ash tray. Consolation prizes to those who thought it was a drawer handle; it certainly looks like one!

Smoking in cinemas used to be considered completely normal, despite the issues to projection that the smoke hovering in the auditorium must have caused. It was one of the reasons that ventilation was built into the cinema; you can see ventilation grilles in the Regal still today.

There's still a little evidence in the cinema of these lost artefacts. Check out this photograph of the radiators on the wooden partition in the middle of the auditorium:



That's an ash tray just like the one in this week's challenge! Only that one is a bit squashed, obviously. There are two still in situ in the cinema, one on each of the sides of the auditorium. None survive in the middle section, as there are no radiators there to protect them. Originally, ash trays would have been found on the back of every seat.

We hope you enjoyed this week's object of the week. There will be another a week on Friday; this Friday's challenge will be another guess-the-film.

Also coming up this week on the blog we'll have the first of the photographs from inside the cinema during the restoration work. Things are beginning to change inside...

Object of the Week 2: The Sequel

Welcome to another addition of Object of the Week. We've found some pretty cool things whilst we were taking everything out of the Regal to prepare the building for the restoration work, so every other Friday I hope to be able to show you something from the cinema and give you the weekend to figure out what it is. On Monday I'll let you know the answer! Feel free to post your guesses in the comments here, or send them via twitter. Correct guessers will be appropriately praised in Monday's post!

Here's this week's offering. We've got a few of these. They're an interesting shape.

What is it?

If you've not yet added your voice to our survey of film history then now is the time to do so. By answering four very quick questions you can help us to shape the exhibition in the Regal. What are you waiting for? Go do it now!