Watching Brief
Date 15 January 2014 - 9 February 2015
Event ID 1002786
Category Recording
Type Watching Brief
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1002786
The cinema on Buccleuch Street was built in 1930 and originally named as the New Victoria Theatre, later being renamed the Odeon. In the 1980s the cinema was converted into a multiplex cinema and the original theatre fly tower was converted into Cinemas 4-5. The brick-built fly tower was originally built to carry an array of stage lights and pulley systems that allowed the main auditorium curtains to rise and fall. The ground floor of the fly tower also housed a large number of dressing rooms, which were removed when Cinema 4 was installed. The interior east facing elevation of the fly tower was masked by an internal steel staircase and other structural infilling related to Cinemas 4 and 5. Stripping out this 1980s steelwork allowed access to the roof space of the fly tower where the 1930s composite roof was exposed. This was found to comprise two main supporting Pratt trusses built into the fly tower walls. The trusses carried two longer load-bearing Pratt trusses that supported the attic floor of the mansard roof. The sloping angle of the mansard jack-trusses were fixed to the end of the main attic floor beams to form the low angled profile of the roof. The purlins were timber and supported on the jack-trusses by a series of angled cleats. Other features recorded included stairs and window; a blocked doorway; both original entrances into the fly tower; and a sprinkler riser pipe with shut-off valve and gauges made by Mather and Platt, Engineers, Manchester.
The queue shelter was built a year after the New Victoria was opened in 1930. The shelter was a simple functional building. Its construction using plate steel frames and stanchions for the walls and angle iron for the composite roof was typical of the period when this type of steelwork was widely used in industrial buildings and agricultural sheds. The elevation fronting Buccleuch Street was constructed using ashlar stonework and quoins. The elevation supported a sign board lit by electric lights that depicted ‘The New Victoria Front Stalls Entrance’.
A watching brief revealed the deep foundations of the fly tower and its basement and bedrock close to the current ground level. No archaeological features that predated the cinema complex were revealed. The work followed on from a programme of building recording work carried out between March and November 2014.
Information from Michael Cressey (CFA Archaeology Ltd) February 2015. OASIS ID - cfaarcha1-210356
