{"id":27311,"date":"2018-09-19T15:24:05","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T14:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/?p=27311"},"modified":"2018-09-19T15:24:05","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T14:24:05","slug":"birmingham-art-deco-cinema-ruined-in-blaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2018\/09\/19\/birmingham-art-deco-cinema-ruined-in-blaze\/","title":{"rendered":"Birmingham Art deco cinema ruined in blaze"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0cinema in Harborne, South Birmingham has been devastated by a shocking\u00a0fire, leaving the local community to mourn\u00a0the loss of a local\u00a0historic landmark. Abandoned picture house was “neglected” by planners.<\/strong><\/p>\n

More than 50 fire fighters worked through the night to tackle the blaze at the historic Royalty Cinema in Harborne, a suburb of Birmingham.<\/p>\n

Dramatic images released by\u00a0West Midlands Fire Service\u00a0showed smoke and flames tipped from the roof of the rare grade-II\u00a0Art Deco building, as eight pumps tackled the blaze – Harborne High Street has been re-opened by adjacent Greenhill Road.<\/p>\n

Harborne resident Jennifer Payne was stunned when she found out about the fire was at the cinema, which has been at the centre of a community effort to restore the historic building.<\/p>\n

“My house is right behind it, I grew up in it’s shadow and now it won’t be there anymore,” said the 27 year old, who works in television.<\/p>\n

“The Royalty is famous around here – I’ve even played bingo in there a few times! Harborne is a really nice area in Birmingham and that building has always stood out – it’s quite an important part of the high street. We were hoping it might be opened again one day – I’m devastated that it’s gone.”<\/p>\n

Di Lynne tweeted that the fire was a “Terrible shame”. “So sad to loose another piece of history,” she added.<\/p>\n

Nick Drake filmed the fire as the incident unfolded. He said it was “very sad” to see the iconic Art Deco building go up in flames.<\/p>\n

The Grade II Royalty Cinema was built in 1930 in a period of redevelopment for the British film industry – the government introduced the Cinematograph\u00a0Act in 1927 to recharge national filmmaking\u00a0in the face of the antagonistic influence of Hollywood.<\/p>\n

But very few cinemas from the era survived, and the Royalty was one of the last. It was converted into a bingo hall in 1963, and subsequently remained empty for many years.<\/p>\n

Local conservation group the Royalty Harborne Trust have been in discussions with the heritage Lottery fund to restore it back to a working picture house.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0cinema in Harborne, South Birmingham has been devastated by a shocking\u00a0fire, leaving the local community to mourn\u00a0the loss of a local\u00a0historic landmark. Abandoned picture house was “neglected” by planners. More than 50 fire fighters worked through the night to tackle the blaze at the historic Royalty Cinema in Harborne, a suburb of Birmingham. Dramatic images […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,37,3,112],"tags":[1517,264,1518,1519,1363],"class_list":["post-27311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-local-news","category-news","category-top-stories","tag-art-deco-cinema","tag-birmingham","tag-harborne","tag-the-grade-ii-royalty-cinema","tag-west-midlands-fire-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}