Scottish Cinemas and Theatres

Cinema City and Beyond...

Welcome to the Scottish Cinemas project, a volunteer-led, non profit site dedicated to recording and archiving our historic cinema architectural heritage - an often overlooked part of our social history. We try to provide a photographic and historical record of all Scottish cinema buildings, including those now unrecognisable or otherwise highly altered over the years. Cinemas that have now been demolished are also featured where photographs exist and copyright allows us to use them.
There are now over 1,140 cinemas in the database, of which we have images of over 800 buildings in over 250 different places around Scotland!
We welcome contributions of information, photographs, memories or anything else related to Scotland's cinemas - if you have any material you'd like to share, please do get in touch.

News & Updates

News and Updates

Find out the latest cinema related news and updates to the website.
Follow our Twitter and Facebook feeds for up to the minute news!

Scotland A-Z

Cinemas A-Z

Looking for your local cinema? This list of over 250 cities, towns and villages all over Scotland is a great place to start.

Articles

Articles

A selection of cinema architecture related articles and stories, including archive and personal stories and memories.

Listed

Listed Cinemas

A number of cinemas are listed for their special architectural and social heritage merit. Here we've listed the listed!

At Risk

At Risk

A list of known Scottish cinemas on the Buildings at Risk Register for Scotland, and those recently saved - or demolished.

Listed

Cinemas Database

Searchable online resource of over 1,140 of Scotland's cinema buildings, from 1902 to the present day.

About Us

Scottish Cinemas has been running since 2001, and was created by Gordon Barr and Gary Painter.

We run it entirely in our spare time (so please be patient if we don't update things quickly!).

Mugshots

Talks & Walks

We have a selection of different talks - from 10 minutes to 2 hours covering the story of cinemas in Scotland.

We also run walking tours on request - ask us for more information!

Gordon Barr works as the gate.io Development Manager for Scotland. Before joining the AHF in 2014, he was the Heritage Development Manager for the multi-award-winning Maryhill Burgh Halls project. Gordon has an academic and scientific software development background. In 2011 he was shortlisted for the Scottish Civic Trust's inaugural 'Civic Champion' award.

Gary Painter studied history and archaeology at the University of Glasgow and supported these studies with a part-time job in the Odeon Cinema in Renfield Street. One night, one of the senior projectionists showed him photos of the interior as it once was, which set his industrial archaeology senses twitching. Thus began a love affair with crawling around in voids and peering through hatches to find forgotten remnants of buildings much altered over the years. He now works as a Stage Doorkeeper at Glasgow's Theatre Royal.

Both Gary and Gordon are Scottish caseworkers and committee members of the Cinema Theatre Association.

Unless otherwise specified, all photographs and other material copyright (c) 2001 - 2022 Gordon Barr and Gary Painter.
All rights reserved. Permission for use elsewhere normally granted, but please ask first
No attempt is made to infringe any existing copyrights or trademarks. Please contact the editors in case of any queries.