Sites and Monument Record: Hippodrome (SMR 361)
Description
Built as a cinema. The most notable feature is the large circular auditorium, harled with rendered details. Modern Movement. 2 storey shallow squared projection on N face with door, stepped cornice, 2 windows above with small, continuous, splayed hood and capping cornice. Tall parapet, set back with pronounced clasping blocks and cornice. 2-storey, angle, ticket office later addition, with small dome. Interior altered. Wooden panellling within the ticket office and foyer may have been reused from a ship broken up at McLellan's Yard.
This is a good example of 1920s cinema architecture before the use of art deco.
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Object detail
The building stood empty from the mid 1980s and deteriorated inside with dry rot in the floor boards. In 1996 a local organisation gifted ownership
of the cinema to The Scottish Historic Buildings Trust; studies to determine feasibility of proposals followed. Restoration works, largely funded through the
Bo’ness Townscape Heritage Initiative, and included the installation of new seating and repair and re-upholstering of old seats; reinstatement of the 1926 decorative scheme and repair of the original copper dome above the manager’s office. The project was completed in 2009.
1926
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