The Tivoli Cinema, Mumbles - 1939

Some of my subjects have been very poorly treated. Some have been demolished. Others have had their graves danced upon. I think the Tivoli in Mumbles qualifies for all three.

I discovered the building during a day out to the Mumbles seafront (I can’t switch it off!). I could immediately detect the heritage of the building hiding under the current Co-op livery. However, the building now at 147 Mumbles Rd is not the original cinema building or even the building planned for the site. The Tivoli (locally known as "The Tiv") appears to have had a bumpy ride through its history.

In the course of my research, I visited the Swansea archive and had a look through their records. I found detailed plans dated May 1937, for a plaster and brick building that is very different from the columnated façade that was ultimately built. The proposed design, although quite modern, was not in the modernist Art Deco style. After Oscar Deutsch's Odeon expansion in the mid-thirties, I think the backers of the cinema felt they needed to offer an experience comparable to the market leader. Hence a redesign in the modernist style. Replacing the earlier Kursaal Entertainments Hall, the building featured a central tower with five curved columns framing the four tall first-floor windows. Two wings extended over the four commercial units on the street level. This updated Tivoli Picture Theatre was built and opened in 1939.

It lasted a quarter century as a cinema, closing its doors in December 1964. After having the first-floor windows covered, the remainder of its existence was as an amusement arcade until its final desecration in 2015.

Oyster Wharf was to be a redevelopment of the site, placing the Tivoli at the centre of the development and restoring it to the centrepiece of the village. The plan was to maintain and restore the existing façade of the Tivoli. It was dismantled in 2016 and replaced with a facsimile. Now with added out-of-place corbelling. It appears to have been built from inferior materials that are already degrading just 7 years after completion.

The Tivoli lives on in the happy memories of Mumblers, both as a cinema and arcade. But, I feel the building that now occupies its plot is something of a hollow spectre lacking its original soul.

But rejoice! I have preserved it for you and your children, for all time. Presented, as close as a sparse historical record will allow, to its original opening condition.

You can buy it on all the usual gear.