The Pavilion Cinema was built to be “suited to the delicate requirements of sound” in 1929.
There was a huge local advertising campaign to accompany the release of its first film Showboat. They even dressed up one of the local trams that ran at the time to look like a riverboat, and ran a competition with cash prizes to mark the occasion. The coming of sound to the pictures was a very big deal, so it was very lucrative to get in first. Unfortunately for the owners of the Pavilion, the already established Central Cinema on Friar Street installed sound equipment and pipped them to the post less than one month before the Pavilion opened.
The cinema was fondly remembered by many people we spoke to as part of our oral history interviews on the project. It was known for its Sunday morning children’s picture show: