71) Former Picturedrome CInema, Taibach

Similar to the Ware House gym (Number 62) Ware House Gym) – this unassuming residential block was once one of Port Talbot’s many cinemas. Unlike the Ware House Gym, though, you’d never have known this to look at it. I’m not surprised that the Picturedrome closed. The surprising thing is that it ever opened in the first place. For one thing it is stuck away in a back street. For another thing, although it looks like a decent size in this picture – and as a residential block it is – frankly, as a cinema I found it small. Yes, I found it so, since although it closed in 1984, it opened again in December 1986, after I’d moved to the town. Of all of the town’s cinemas it probably had the reputation of being the bargain basement version. After all, it’s nickname was ‘the cach’. Now, you don’t need a GCSE in Welsh to figure out that this means something brown and steaming which comes out of Cowes – and I’m not talking about the Isle of Wight Ferry. I did actually see a couple of films – “The Name of the Rose” and “Little Shop of Horrors” – and it didn’t seem particularly unhygienic to me, but whatever the case, it only lasted a year or two before closing again, and within a few years had been converted into a nursing home.