The Windmill Theatre in Great Yarmouth was originally built as the Gem Theatre and is one of Britain's earliest surviving Cine Variety buildings.
The Theatre was designed by Arthur S. Hewitt, who also designed the Empire Theatre in the town the same year. The Windmill was built for C.B. Cochran and opened on the 4th of July 1908 with the odd proviso that men and women had to sit on opposite sides of the auditorium.
The Theatre was built as a Cine Variety Theatre and in the early decades of the 20th Century was providing the number two variety bills in Great Yarmouth, and later, in 1948, when it was renamed the Windmill Theatre, it was regularly used for summer shows, a policy which continued into the 1960s.
Right - The Windmill Theatre, Great Yarmouth in 2007 - Courtesy Charles Bowman.
In the 1980s the Theatre was in use as a children's play area, and later became known as the Odditorium which was an exhibition of weird and wonderful things similar to 'Ripley's Believe it or Not' exhibitions, although there was now a Cinema in the upper part of the building.
Currently the Theatre is in use as an Amusement Arcade and miniature Golf Course, and although the building is Grade II* Listed much of its internal decoration is hidden by false walls and hangings.
