The Northwick Cinema is a fluke.  It’s strange to find a superb Art Deco cinema in a quiet suburb of a cathedral city, designed by an independent architect who specialised in cinemas in random places such as Sheerness, Kettering and Walton-on-Thames, containing the only surviving interior-design work of an exceptional artist who worked mainly in the North-East.

The proprietors of Scala (Worcester) Ltd had operated a city-centre picture-house of that name since 1922, and it’s unclear why this small local company expanded in the late Thirties by building a brand-new 1,109-seat auditorium out of the city centre.

They chose as their architect C Edmund Wilford of Leicester.  He designed the Regal Cinema, Walton-on-Thames and the Regal Cinema, Bridlington (both 1938 – the same year as the Northwick):  Bridlington’s hidden Art Deco gem | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times.

The interior is by John Alexander (1888-1974), an artist of considerable talent whose watercolour perspectives are in the RIBA Drawings Collection and online at ‘ John Alexander (1888-1974)’ images and/or videos results.  He not only designed but manufactured the plaster figures and motifs that distinguished his designs. 

His innovative work, mainly located in Scotland and the north-east, has been so neglected that the Northwick contains his only design still surviving intact and in situ.  For this reason, the Northwick was listed Grade II in 1985, and its Art Deco design is recognised as nationally important.

The auditorium is dominated by a fibrous plaster composition of mythical human figures, drawing the eye dramatically towards the proscenium.  By the use of smooth curves, heightened perspective and strong geometric shapes, lit indirectly, the auditorium conveys a sense of excitement that heralds the entertainment it was intended to frame. 

Unlike the Odeon house-architects’ use of Art Deco to create a streamlined interior that was smooth and literally dust-resistant, Alexander reinterpreted the baroque magnificence of the Victorian theatre in the larger-than-life scale of modernist architecture.  Alexander’s work at the Northwick cost £1,138.

The cinema opened on November 28th 1938 and closed on October 10th 1966, reopening as a bingo club at the end of that month.  Mecca, the unintentional saviour of so many such buildings, maintained it well and redecorated it abominably, until falling attendances led to closure in 1982.

There was much anxiety and some controversy about the building in the years it stood empty. 

Ultimately a local property developer and entertainment impresario, Ian Perks, took over the building and engaged Martin and Nicolette Baines to refurbish Alexander’s interior, restoring the colour-scheme from his original water-colours and wherever possible utilising original fittings, lighting and carpet-fragments in the renewal.

The Northwick reopened as a theatre and concert venue on June 5th 1991, and hosted shows by – among others – the Drifters, Gene Pitney, Nigel Kennedy, Freddie Starr, the Searchers and Bernard Manning, but closed in 1996.  The extent of its decline is portrayed in a 2024 article in the Worcester News:  Worcester: The Northwick as a cinema, theatre and business | Worcester News.

The local council rejected a proposal to demolish in favour of an apartment complex in 2003, and the following year David and Helen Gray bought it to use as an antiques showroom, sympathetically preserving its external appearance including the “NORTHWICK” logo on the vertical fin above the entrance and featuring John Alexander’s interior design.

The Northwick opened in 2007 as Grays of Worcester, a company which has treated it well, making the most of its visual appeal to market their stock:  HISTORY – Grays Of Worcester. 

The auditorium rakes have been adapted to maximise horizontal display space, but circulation between levels is achieved using the original stairways.  David Gray made a point of retaining the front-row seats in the circle so that it’s possible to appreciate the space as would a member of the cinema audience.  The operating box at the top of the building serves as a workroom.  The listed space is intact, and appears to be fully reversible.

The Northwick is currently up for sale, as Grays plan to downsize to smaller premises.

I hope it goes to an owner as enlightened and imaginative as David and Helen Gray.