Virtual site tour

There’s been heaps of progress on site recently – so we thought it was about time for an update!

As you can see the extension is now mostly up, and the walls have been boarded out, revealing for the first time some of the new spaces inside, including the new community room on the first floor. New red brickwork will soon be going up, helping to connect the extension to the existing building.

At the very top of the cinema, the leaning parapet above the façade has been demounted and reconstructed with new structural ties, making it nice and vertical (and secure!). And parts of the historic brickwork around the building have been repointed, as well as other ongoing stone repairs.

The basement cinema is also coming along nicely and we’ll soon begin to see our new second screen take shape. At this stage the construction looks relatively straightforward but this has been one of the most complicated parts of the project until now, not only due to the extensive excavation that was required in such a confined site, but because of a clever box-in-a-box engineering solution that was devised by Buro Happold and Page\Park to prevent any sound from passing between this new screen and the existing screen above.

Once lots of this structural work is completed this summer, the project will focus on more of the intricate conservation and restoration work that’s still to come, including the repair and refurbishment of many key heritage features.

So keep an eye on our socials this summer for many more updates, including a more precise date for when we are expecting to reopen this autumn!