Tivoli

The entrance and foyers are part of the Georgian Borough House, the Tivoli having been built at the rear to the design of E de Wilde Holding, a well-known architect who lived and worked in Bournemouth. He enjoyed a business arrangement with local builder A S Prince, in building cinemas, etc and running them speculatively until a buyer could be found. Weeks after opening, Prince sold out to Portsmouth Town Cinemas, who ran the Tivioli until 1968. It closed in 1981, not from lack of support, but because the Dorset County Council had plans for a new road, and compulsorily purchased the site. In 1991 The Friends of the Tivoli group was formed and a petition raised to persuade the council to donate the building to the town for the arts and entertainment. Eventually the building was handed over to Project Tivoli, as it became called.

The Tivoli was built as a cinema/theatre, designed with a large stage and orchestra pit: the lack of dressing rooms is thought to have been a last minute cost-cutting measure. When local societies have staged productions there, they had to bring in caravans for changing.

The theatre is rectangular with a single balcony and a shallow, arched roof, divided into segments by plain rounded pilaster strips which continue across the ceiling arch ending either side of a lighting transom running the length of the auditorium. The simple proscenium is in the same style, but with curved fluted jambs. A shallow fluted frieze runs round the hall. Above is a frieze of stencilled decoration of leaves hanging from stems, a rare survivor of the style of decoration. There is a single balcony. With hidden bulbs in lighting troughs used with metallic paint on the ceilings and upper walls, it was originally possible to take a sea of light slowly through the colours of the spectrum.

There are two shops on the street front, used as box office and for promotional displays.