Worthing Dome

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.