New Plaza Cinema

5 Castle Street,
Hay-on-Wye, HR3 5DF

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Additional Info

Functions: Retail

Styles: Streamline Moderne

Previous Names: Plaza Super Sound Cinema

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New Plaza Cinema

Located in Hay-on-Wye, Brecknockshire, Wales on the border with Herefordshire, England. In 1937, this was listed as the Plaza Super Sound Cinema. It was a small local cinema that had a proscenium 12 feet wide. It retained this name into the mid-1950’s. Eventually CinemaScope was fitted and it was re-named New Plaza Cinema, with the proscenium width now 28 feet wide. It was closed in 1965 for the usual reasons. The former cinema was bought by Richard Booth, the ‘book king of Hay’, and became a vast second hand book store. In May 2012 Richard Booth’s Bookshop Cinema opened in another bookshop on Brook Street (this has its own page on Cinema Treasures).

Today the town of Hay-on-Wye is the centre of the British second hand book trade. The Hay Cinema Bookshop having become world famous.

Contributed by Editha Pearce

Recent comments (view all 1 comments)

John Griffiths
John Griffiths on August 21, 2020 at 3:53 pm

It is worth going into this bookshop if only to spot the remains of the old cinema. The right hand wall has been knocked through to the adjoining property to enlarge the shop.Note the stars on the ceiling, the top and upper sides of the proscenium, the foyer with its original terrazzo tiling and the old projection box with signs of the ports behind the books plus the fire lantern in the ceiling.The building still has a cinema feel to it!

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