Urban Exploration is nothing new, its been around a long time and has developed into a subculture itself over the past decade. For the uninitiated urban exploration (UE or urbex are other names) is the activity of exploring abandoned, disused or off limits places. After many successful scaling of the old Zurich Building I turned my focus to the former Odeon Cinema in the North End area of Portsmouth.
A brief history of the building from cinematreasures.org
“The Portsmouth Odeon opened on 14th December 1936 with Sydney Howard in “Chick”. It was the largest and most expensive Andrew Mather designed Odeon of that year. Total seating was provided for 1,824, with 1,224 in stalls and 600 in balcony. It has an impressive monolithic tower frontage in cream faience with vertical green bands and a roof of red Spanish tiles. The auditorium’s ornate decoration included tall murals on side walls depicting film subjects. In 2007 the Freehold on the building was sold by Odeon Theatres Ltd. and after a few false rumours of closure, the final performances were held on 10th January 2008.”
So one evening a couple of us found ourselves darting through the side access of an empty house, jumping the wall in the back garden and starting what has turned out to be a rather nice little mini project.
Initially I thought it wasn’t going to be much visually, after all it was just a cinema. But Odeon built their cinemas differently. The main building itself has two points of access.
The lower screen you access by climbing up a small wall with the help of a gridded fence and jumping through a window. This screen is flooded as are the toilets next to the screen making the water rank with sewage. When you walk on the main stage, which is made of wood, you can see water seeping through as the wood has rotted after being submerged in water for years. The below shots were taken whilst standing on the vents as they are metal and solid.
The below image highlights perfectly why the building became abandoned.
After exiting the way we entered, we made our way into the main section which is accessed down an alley to the side of the building. The first two smaller screens are about 10 seconds from the door, the one below is the left hand one which had a ton of debris blocking the doorway.
Along one side of the room were a few man sized holes. These led into an access corridor which ran the length of the room. At one end was a projector room which serviced both ground floor cinema screens.
There is no worthwhile equipment in these rooms now but there is plenty of film reel scattered around the floor. The floor itself is slowly going south, so be careful in here.
The main screen IS the main draw. It is a shining example of the retro style cinema screens odean theatres were modelled on: a beautiful curved symmetrical room. The first visit here I didn’t have time to shoot what I had in mind, so the shots below were from trips number two and three. I used two different flash trigger systems with my camera mounted on my tripod so I could overlay the shots in photoshop.
As we explored the screen we found a small access hole high off the ground behind the projection screen. Being curious we climbed up to and through the hole which led into a large cavity ceiling high above the hall below. This area contained wooden walkways and a cooling system.
At the far end of the roof cavity is a small hatch, and with some encouragement it came open. This hatch led out onto the exterior roof which had a small balcony area with a wooden seat.
Whilst I love the adventure that urbex projects bring, it is a crying shame that such a wonderful building has been left to rot from the ground up. The cost of restoring the building itself would be in the millions and can imagine that demolishing it wouldn’t be much cheaper.
As with all explores if you do ever fancy a trip into this echo of an art deco past then do exercise caution. Exploring abandoned buildings comes with significant risks and ones that you must accept should something go wrong.
All long term abandoned buildings have their structural faults in the shape of loose walls and dodgy floors. If you do try to access the roof make sure you are strong enough for the climb as it hangs about 8 feet over some steel work that will cause you injury if you fall. When you do get in through the access hole keep your weight over the girders until you get onto the walkway as it is a long way down to the cinema floor. Buildings like this after often secure, so it as at your own risk how you access them.
