Heritage Lottery Grant News

 Confirmation of a Heritage Lottery Fund Grant of over £680,000 to repair and conserve
The Regal Cinema
and run a two year programme of community activities was announced on December 22nd 2010. To read in full click here.

 There are pictures from the Regal's live shows on the blog and some pictures of what is happening  during the restoration work - click to go there

Click to hear site manager Paul  Lunn talk about the project.
 

There is Regal Twitter... a Regal Blog... where you can post comments... or you can Click the Monkey and look at the Murals which are at the heart of the restoration programme. You can also Listen to the Regal Story

The top left of these three pictures shows the inside of the Regal before work began; scaffolding now fills the auditorium in readiness for restoration to begin on the murals. 

From boards on top of the scaffold the ceiling can be reached and a half way level platform round the walls allows access to the middle sections of the murals. Some in-filling has been done.

Plastic covering protects  the centre section of seating,  the outer seating blocks have been removed to allow safe placing of the scaffold.

Other parts the auditorium that might get damaged during restoration work have been carefully boxed in.

 Click for a rehearsal of Regal reopening

In the foyer the toilets are being prepared for re-fitting.  In the ladies which will become the gents, the outline of a door way has emerged.  This would have been one of several areas blocked up in 1936 that formed the outside walls of earlier, possibly seventeenth century buildings, that stood on the site. These walls and the positions of the opening can be clearly seen marked on the 1936 plans.....MORE