The end of an Art Deco Cinema - Purley ABC (Astoria), South London. The demolition and replacement

The end of an Art Deco Cinema

The ABC Cinema in Purley was demolished during the winter of the millennium 1999 /2000.

I photographed it at various stages of demolition and these images are recorded in this video along with some history and context and what is there now

Many cinemas of this age had a similar fate, in fact this one actually did pretty well to almost survive to the next millennium as many were demolished in the 1980s and 90s

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Purley is located in Surrey or Greater London in the London Borough of Croydon, seen here on a map.

For many it is a commuter town with Purley having a well used railway station and like numerous similar towns it had its own cinema, in fact for a time it had 2.

We will be looking at the ABC cinema, previously known as the Astoria, as seen here on the 1956 map

The other cinema, called Regal, was on the Brighton Road, as with numerous other disused cinemas of the time became a bingo hall before being closed and demolished. Screwfix is now on the site.


Sources
http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/1...

Map
https://maps.nls.uk/