Worthing Film Heritage Trail

The Connaught Theatre was originally built as the purpose-built Picturedrome cinema, and opened in July 1914. In 1917 the Connaught Hall was built for dances, concerts and drama performances.

The two venues coexisted until 1935; in that year the Worthing Repertory Company, which had been outgrowing the Connaught, moved next door to the Picturedrome, renamed the building the Connaught Theatre and commissioned an architect to extend the façade of the building in an Art Deco style to mirror the style of the Odeon chain of cinemas that were sweeping the country.

The Connaught closed for a period in 1966 and was taken over by Worthing Borough Council. The venue was at risk of closure again in 1986, and since 1987 it has been a dual use cinema/theatre with two screens.

Marine Parade which runs parallel to the sea is featured in a number of films, usually as part of a “dirty weekend” away!

In Up the Junction (1968) working class Battersea boy (Dennis Waterman) takes his upper class Chelsea girlfriend (Suzy Kendall) to Worthing for the weekend, she delights in eating cockles on the seafront. In Dance with a Stranger (1985) you can spot Ruth Ellis (Miranda Richardson) having an impromptu photo session on the beach as part of her weekend away with Desmond (Ian Holm).

In 2007 Worthing Dome emerged like a phoenix from the ashes after a period of neglect, followed by campaigning and restoration. It is now a beautifully restored Grade II* listed building owned by the Worthing Dome & Regeneration Trust.

Its history goes back almost 100 years before then. It originally opened as the Kursaal in 1911 which incorporated one of the country’s earliest purpose-built cinemas. The brainchild of Swiss impresario Carl Adolf Seebold the Kursaal featured a Coronation Hall, a skating rink and was surrounded by extensive gardens.

The films Seebold showed in the Electric Theatre (mainly silent animations) were so popular sufficiently profitable that in 1913 he converted the Coronation Hall into a second cinema. It was renamed the Dome in 1915. In 1918 he began a redevelopment programme to make these changes permanent and in 1921 it reopened as a cinema and ballroom. In the 1920s Seebold built/bought two further cinemas in Worthing. After the WWII the cinema fell into disrepair, and in 1955 a few years after his death in 1951, the new owners hired architects Goldsmith and Pennells to install a new cinemascope screen. In 1969, Worthing Borough Council purchased the freehold of the Dome specifically to redevelop the area. The ensuing thirty years proved to be the most turbulent in the Dome's history, with the ownership being transferred to private companies and the Council. The state of the building deteriorated further and at periods had to be closed for safety reasons. On the 9 November 1999 the Worthing Dome & Regeneration Trust paid the council a nominal fee of £10 and took possession of the cinema.

Since then the Dome cinema has undergone a £2.3million makeover. This was made possible with a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £1.6million being awarded to the Worthing Dome and Regeneration Trust. English Heritage also endorsed the project by contributing £200,000.

Both the Worthing Dome and the adjacent bus depot appear prominently in Wish You Were Here (1987) directed by David Leland, as Eric (Tom Bell) plays the cinema’s projectionist.

Worthing Pier designed by Sir Robert Rawlinson opened on 12 April 1862 as a simple 960 foot long promenade deck. It was widened in 1889 to accommodate a ‘recreational’ pavilion. The Concert Pavilion (now Pavilion Theatre) was built in 1926. In September 1933 fire destroyed the pier and the Pier Pavilion, leaving only the Pavilion Theatre at the northern end. The Pier was rebuilt in 1935 in an art deco style, which is reflected in the amusement arcade and the Southern Pavilion. The Pier was closed during the war but the Pavilion re-opened as a garrison theatre in 1942. It is now a popular multi-purpose venue.

The Pier can be seen in a number of movies including The Birthday Party (1968), Wish You Were Here (1987), Cor, Blimey! (2000). It can also be spotted in an episode of Men Behaving Badly and the Channel 4 2012 series The Fear.