The Capitol, Forest Hill: What Happened to the Art Deco Cinema
Updated: 2 days ago
There is a building on London Road in Forest Hill that most people walk past thinking it is a pub. It was a pub, for twenty-two years. Before that it was a bingo hall. Before that it was one of the most complete picture palaces in London. 1,687 seats, a Compton organ that rose out of the pit, and a gilded proscenium that is still up there above the bar.
Is the Capitol in Forest Hill Still Open?
Not as a pub. The Capitol traded as a Wetherspoon from May 2001 and served its last day on 15 October 2023, when the chain closed it as a commercial decision. The building was sold the same year, and in July 2025 a planning application went to Lewisham Council to turn it into an indoor children's play centre.
Everything described below is what was inside when I photographed it, and most of it is protected by the listing rather than by whoever holds the lease. But check what is open before you make the trip.
Who Designed the Capitol, and in What Style?
J. Stanley Beard, who built a career out of them — something like a hundred cinemas, in whatever style the client wanted: Baroque, Beaux Arts, Egyptian Revival. Historic England lists the Capitol Grade II and describes it as Art Deco Egyptian, which is the combination Beard was best at. His Luxor in Twickenham, from the same year, is usually named as his finest Egyptian interior. He kept designing until 1963, and then, at seventy-three, went off and restored the gardens at Compton Acres in Dorset.
What Opened the Capitol in 1929?
It opened on 11 February 1929 with John Gilbert in the silent Man, Woman and Sin. The building went up in 1928–29 with 1,687 seats, a café, a stage twenty-two feet deep for variety turns, and a Compton organ of two manuals and eight ranks. Talking pictures were arriving in Britain that same year, so the Capitol is one of the last London cinemas designed for an orchestra and an organist and then immediately retrofitted for sound.
Why Is the Capitol a Rare Survival?
Because almost nothing was taken out. It was listed on 14 September 1993 as "a rare survival of a complete 1920s cinema", and the earliest complete Beard cinema still standing.
What the listing protects is the part you can see from a bar stool. The original proscenium with gilded relief figures in the pediment and engaged columns at each side. The ribbed plaster ceiling, the pilasters and brackets down the walls, the moulded balcony front, and the columned tearoom off the foyer. Stand in the middle and the orchestra pit is somewhere under your feet.
Where Was the World's First Illuminated Organ Console?
Here, in September 1932. Frank Mitchell at the Compton works had worked out how to light a console case from the inside, glazing the side panels of the pillars so the light shone through. The first one went into the Capitol with a new three-manual instrument replacing the original two. The organist Jack Courtnay unveiled it.
A theatre organ already rose out of the pit in a spotlight; this one arrived glowing, and the colour could be changed mid-number. Audiences loved it, and it became standard across the Compton range.
When Did the Capitol Stop Being a Cinema?
On 13 October 1973, with a double bill of Scarecrow and Class of '44. Associated British Cinemas had run it since July 1933 and put its own name over the door in December 1968.
After the closure came the years that usually end with a bulldozer — and the thing that saved this building is the thing people tend to sneer at. Mecca opened bingo here on 23 February 1978, and bingo kept the roof on, the plasterwork dry and the proscenium in one piece until December 1996. The pub came four and a half years later.
Was There a David Bowie Corner?
There was, in the pub years: a triptych tucked into one corner, marking a Brixton-born singer who grew up a few miles up the road in Bromley. It belonged to the fit-out rather than to the building, so unlike the proscenium it has no protection and may not survive the next tenant. If you want more of him in London, there is the Bowie 75 pop-up.
How Do You Get to the Capitol, Forest Hill?
It is at 11–21 London Road, Forest Hill, London SE23 3TW, two minutes on foot from Forest Hill station, which is on the Overground and on Southern trains from London Bridge. The Horniman Museum is a ten-minute walk up the hill, so the two make an easy afternoon.
Where Else Can You See a 1920s Cinema in London?
The one still doing the job it was built for is the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith. A 1932 picture palace with a fan-vaulted foyer and its own Compton organ under the stage, and you can buy a ticket any week of the year. For the ones that are normally shut, the Open House festival each September is the way in.
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