Planners back war memorial at cinema instead of flats scheme

PLANNERS are backing a bid to turn a bombed cinema in Hull into a tribute to those who served on the Home Front over a rival application seeking to convert it into flats.

For three years, campaigners have been working on proposals to turn the National Picture Theatre on Beverley Road into a memorial to the 1,200 civilians who died in the Nazi bombardment and an educational resource for schoolchildren.

The cinema is the only blitzed civilian building ruin left standing in England and has been described as of “iconic importance”.

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Hull Council’s planning committee meets next Wednesday to decide on the plans as well as a second application by owners Reid Park Properties which wants to put up a new building behind the old frontage, with a restaurant downstairs and six flats upstairs.

Plans by the National Civilian WW2 Memorial Trust would see the advertising hoarding in front of the building finally torn down and wrought iron gates installed.

An education rooms would be built – as well as a memorial garden with plaques and an air raid shelter – and the next door Swann Inn would be restored to its original design and a two-storey extension added to house a microbrewery.

The proposals – which would cost a minimum of £750,000 – have won widespread backing from organisations including Hull Civic Society, English Heritage and the Building At Risk Trust.

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There has also been 18 letters of support from people who think it would lift the area, attract visitors and be a “wonderful educational resource for future generations of children”.

Planners agree and are recommending support.

However, Reid Park Properties’ plans have drawn objections from a long list of organisations including English Heritage, The Council for British Archeology, the Cinema Theatre Association and Save Britain’s Heritage. Planning officers say the plans are an improvement over previous ones, but are recommending refusal as a number of the flats would have limited daylight and a poor outlook. National Civilian WW2 Memorial Trust secretary Alan Canvess said he and two other trustees would be at the meeting to argue their case.

Mr Canvess said: “We will be doing everything in our power to get the (owners’) application refused and at the same time getting ours passed.

“We are very hopeful it will be passed, but you can’t anticipate what the decision is going to be.

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“We have to convince them that what we are doing is viable.”

Mr Canvess said planning permission should open up doors to grants and ensure people took their proposals seriously. He said the trust had positive feedback from the Heritage Lottery over buying the site, which is up for sale at £230,000, although the Lottery officials had said they would not put money towards developing the pub, because it was a commercial enterprise.

He said: “It has been a very slow process – obviously we’d have liked things to have gone more quickly. But we are very serious in making the 70th anniversary of the bombing the year when we push ahead with this.”

The theatre is virtually unchanged since it was attacked by enemy aircraft on the night of March 17 1941 – when it was showing Charlie Chaplin’s satire The Great Dictator.

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Unable to get to shelters because of the severity of the raid, 150 people crammed into the foyer, but remarkably all survived when an airborne mine landed at the rear of premises, destroying the screen and gutting the building.

Today the bombsite has returned to nature, with trees thrusting past bare girders to an open sky. Roots and ivy festoon the stage and exposed staircases climb towards the circle, lost 70 years ago.

The Trust raised £1,000 for the planning application.

Among the donations was £100 from the screen and stage writer Alan Plater, just days before his death last June aged 75.

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