striking Art Deco style by architect David Evelyn Nye. When the cinema was opened, the main entrance to the Rex was on the corner of the High Street, with a curved concrete canopy and tall vertical windows illuminating the double-height entrance foyer. Within the foyer, a large Art Deco chandelier hung from a decorated ceiling above a curved island ticket booth. In those days, cinemagoers would access the auditorium either via steps up to the stalls or via the two staircases which swept up to a central door to the circle seats. The auditorium was placed at 90° to the foyer, extending across the site parallel to the main road. To maximise the space, the projection booth was built into an exterior balcony protruding form the building above Three Close Lane, supported by large concrete brackets. It was accessed by an external iron staircase to reduce the fire risk of bringing flammable nitrate film reels into the theatre. A joke shared among local residents was that the architect had forgotten to add a projection room and that this box was added later. As space was at a premium in the circle, a café and dining room was located on the ground floor behind the stalls and the foyer, with the result that the circle had more seats than the stalls. The interior design of the Rex included a variety of ornate features; the designer is not known but it is assumed to be the work of Mollo and Egan who collaborated with Nye on other cinema interiors. The Rex interior featured stylised floral stucco friezes around the dining room, a striking decorated foyer ceiling rose, and the nautical flavour set by Nye's dining room porthole windows was continued with the addition of scallop shell-shaped light fittings and stucco waves in the auditorium. The main screen itself was surrounded by an ornate proscenium, with Art Deco floral designs obscuring the ventilation grilles. Since the cinema's dereliction and later re-opening, some of the original features have been lost; the chandelier and the ticket booth were removed after the 1976 Zetter takeover. The auditorium was divided in 1976 into two circle studio screens, while the stalls were used as a bingo hall. However, despite these alterations, most of the original fabric and decoration survived the years of decline, enough to merit spot-listing by English Heritage in 1988, and in 1990 the Department of