Three Towns Forum
The Local => Three Towns Blog => Topic started by: DaveR on November 20, 2014, 10:53:45 am
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Not that many people are aware that the premises of HMV in Mostyn Street was originally built as the St. George's Hall (later the Princes Theatre) back in 1864.
(http://www.threetownsforum.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/stgeorgeshall.jpg)
If you take a look at this Then & Now photo, you can see the left hand side of the HMV shop and how it used to look in its Princes Theatre days:
(http://www.threetownsforum.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/4038026920_6599a8e6a5_o.jpg)
By the 1920s, its glory days as a theatre were long over and it had become a cinema called the New Princes Theatre.
It finally closed sometime in the 1960s, when the ground floor frontage was ripped out and converted to a shop, the Maypole. Later, it became a Liptons supermarket (with a cafe on the first floor), then FarmFoods, then Lo-Cost. Finally, in 2004, the building was refurbished and a more sympathetic shopfront added when it became a branch of the HMV music retailer.
You can still see a domed ceiling through the first floor windows, if you look carefully. And I recall a member on the old Llandudno forum saying that he once came across the old Princes Theatre sign dumped in a quarry up by Nant Y Gamar woods!
(http://www.threetownsforum.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/hmv.jpg)
St. Georges Hall/HMV in 2009
First published in October 2009