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...
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