About this Project

In June we were contacted by Destiny Church over clearing the projection equipment from their newly acquired building, the former New Tivoli Cinema, Edinburgh, the cinema was opened in January 1934 and was a larger replacement of the original Tivoli on the site from 1913.

Designed by architect James Mckissack, it boasted a vast modern 1200 seat auditorium, dressing rooms and large stage suitable for variety use as well as the best in cinema presentations, The vast red-brick façade was also highlighted with a stunning neon scheme and art deco sandblasted windows to the upper foyers and stairwells.

The New Tivoli operated as a cinema until 1973 and was rumoured to be an regular haunt of the young John Lennon when visiting family in the area. Bingo was to keep the New Tivoli, now Carlton alive, and little change to the interior was made during its life up to closure in 2006.

The building lay disused and derelict until the purchase by the Destiny Church group in 2008. They having already tackled one similar ex-cinema conversion saw the potential in the building and plan to restore the cinema to its former glory, incorporating many of those original features in the church design.

The projection room was not large for a cinema of its capacity and with the huge projectors, slide lantern and dimmer bank left little room for ‘swinging cats’ between change-overs. British Thompson Houston were a key player in the manufacture of cinema equipment and the post-war BTH SUPA (single unit projection assembly) was a radical idea to contain all projection, arc, amplification and ancillary equipment in one cast-iron lump.

The projection room having ceased use in the seventies has aged better than most and we were surprised at the condition of the equipment, unfortunately someone at some point in the past had taken some key components but what remained was rust-free. Much of the installation was found to have serial numbers only just into the double-figures so is likely to be an early install of the ‘Mark I’ units from the late 1940’s.

Being a ‘little distance’ from our base in Kent we had no opportunity to carry out a ‘recce’ on the Tivoli, And to keep costs down were keen to remove the equipment in a short amount of time. After a 9-hour drive on our arrival to the venue we were kindly greeted and shown the daunting route up the 12 sets of stairs to the projection room. The construction of the SUPA was also a great disadvantage to us on the day, as we spent several hours stripping down and sliding one heavy piece at a time down the many stairs for loading.

Now all in dry storage we hope to start some restoration in the coming weeks -aided by an original BTH engineer’s SUPA manual found by pure accident last year. In reflection it was a very long few days but great to get the opportunity to save these now rare machines and we thank Owen from Destiny Church for his kind support.

The removal of this installation was carried out by:

Alex Cooper

Adam Pearson