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Original Text (Annotation: EAW043425 / 960293)

' This is Deptford Odeon, designed by George Coles and opened in 1938on the site of a former the cinema, the Palladium. One of Lewisham’s largest cinemas, the Deptford Odeon had a capacity of c.1700. To those like me who were raised in the final years of Deptford Odeon’s life –a period when it added new and vivid colour to the term ‘flea-pit’- contemporary photos of the new cinema's sumptuous interior come as something of a shock: it’s Deco extravagance seems luxurious beyond belief for Deptford and it must have been quite the place to go when it first opened. The building had a good war, although it was damaged by the V-1 that devastated Reginald Square, directly behind it and reopened in the early 1950s with Petula Clark as the guest of honour. After just over thirty-one years doing business, the Odeon closed in 1970 then stood for almost twenty years in a slow death by dereliction before finally being put out of its misery in May 1988, replaced by more of the cheap and nasty post-war urban architecture that so blights the borough. '