MAJESTIC Port Talbot, South Wales

"It's like another world" I often say to myself when I return to a place that has changed beyond all recognition. Back in the early 1990's I was spending a lot of time traveling to South Wales to record oral history interviews with people who were involved in the steel industry. Inevitably this meant many trips to Port Talbot, a town that had been associated with steel making since the beginning of the twentieth century.

During my time off  between the interviewing sessions, I'd wander around taking photographs, and I often made a beeline for old cinema buildings, which have always fascinated me. This photograph captures the deserted hulk of what was once the marvelous MAJESTIC cinema, which had first opened in 1938.

During what was actually a very short life for this cinema, it had several name changes including the Odeon and the Plaza, and then THE MAJESTIC spent the last decade of its life as a bingo hall until it closed down forever in 1980.

I took the photo during the very last years of a long period that the MAJESTIC had stood empty - before the wrecking ball paid a visit in 1995.

Not so Fine & Fair for the Majestic

The entrance to the MAJESTIC was the all-black tiled area situated to the right of Fyne & Fayre Footwear. Bill posters cover the front, and a few shopping carts and a coin-in-the-slot toy machine have been spread outside by the shop's enterprising proprietor. But in the end the whole parade was to be flattened as well.

Today a massive Tesco complete with car park covers a landscape which looked so vibrant in a lovely 1958 photo that I've come across online - and which asks so many questions about how such a bustling scene ended up looking so maudlin when I took my photograph 25 years ago?

John Wayne starring in John Huston's 'The Barbarian and the Geisha' at ODEON, Port Talbot