FEATURED

Originally opened on Christmas Day 1922 The Waverley Picture House was a 1320 capacity cinema that was designed by Watson, Salmond & Gray for Shawlands Picture House Ltd. The prominent corner dome with Egyptian columns makes it a handsome building. Inside is/was just as impressive with a barrel roof ceiling and columns along the sides.

As well as a cinema the Waverley also contained tea rooms in the early years. In 1928 a Christie two-manual theatre organ was installed in the cinema before the building was taken over by Associated British Cinemas (ABC) a year later. The organ was removed in 1953 and the name was changed from Waverley to ABC in 1964.

The cinema was eventually closed in 1973 before being converted into a Bingo hall and then a Snooker club before closing again in the late 1990s. It was derelict until 2002 when it was bought by G1 Group and where it served as a nightclub called ‘Tusk’ as well as the ‘Waverley Tea Rooms’ which operated as a separate business just slightly further along Moss-side Road. Tusk was closed in 2009 and Waverley Tea Rooms suffered the same fate in 2017.

Thankfully the beautiful exterior of this building will be retained as it was Grade B and then Grade A Listed by Historic Environment Scotland in 1992/3, and in 2019 it was announced that a ‘national operator’ would be taking on the building. Nothing has happened since then however, and the exterior of the building is in a visibly ever-deteriorating condition.