The Plaza cinema in Port Talbot opened its doors to paying customers during the Easter holiday of 1940, it had been under construction for a little over a year. Although it was always operated as an independent cinema its exterior design owed much to the art deco style of provincial Odeon cinemas. When it first opened the Plaza was a purpose built cinema without any theater pretensions it lacks a fly tower typical of many cinemas of the same period. Its single auditorium seated 1,447 in circle and stalls. Customers entered through a small foyer with a ticket booth and ice cream stand which opened out on to the street through an entry vestibule flanked by two shops which made up the rest of the building's street level facade. The left hand unit was occupied for many years by the Plaza boutique a women's clothing shop, on the right hand side was greasy spoon café.

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The Plaza was the principle entertainment venue for the industrial towns of Port Talbot and Aberavon for many years but like so many cinemas of its era it had become a typical Flee Pit by the early 1980's and appeared a little out of date. The Plaza closed as a cinema for the first time in march 1983 while it was showing "Tootsie" staring Dustin Hoffman. Like many old cinemas it found a new lease of life as a Bingo club but it wasn't very successful and it to closed in 1985. Fortunately the building was saved from dereliction and the Plaza was reopened as a Cinema soon after showing with a debut performance of Disney's Peter Pan. By the Mid 80's the cinema business was changing multi screen cinemas showing different films at the same time, were now the industry standard, the Plaza's owners tried to keep up by converting the the large auditorium into four smaller screens by 1988. The stalls had been divided into three screens seating 450, 165 and 120. The main screen in the front stalls which used the original cinema screen which was converted with a rare silver coating capable of 3D projection which also had better reflective qualities which improved the output from lower powered projectors. Two smaller screens were created by boxing off the rear stalls below the circle level, films in these screens were shown using projectors in the main projection suite above which were directed through a periscope arrangement to the screening rooms on the ground floor. Screen four seating 280 was created in the circle but today it's screen has been removed and it is open at the front looking out over the main auditorium once again.

The Plaza remained open for a further 11 years but once the The Apollo group opened a modern multiplex cinema on the outskirts of Port Talbot the Plaza soon began to lose money it closed its doors for the final time in January 1999 while showing Disney's "Prince of Egypt", shortly after the Cinema building was seized by bailiffs for unpaid debts.

I first saw the Plaza many months before my visit, driving through Port Talbot one evening I was excited to spot such an amazing looking deco cinema lying abandoned just a few miles from home, I immediately pulled over to take a look for any signs of an open door, I had only visited one abandoned cinema, the Nottingham Odeon before an it had been stripped back to a shell, so I was hoping to find the Plaza more intact. However like many abandoned cinemas with so few doors and windows it was completely boarded up and secure so I left disappointed, but determined to keep an eye on the place you never know when an opportunity to peek inside may just pop up.

A few months later traveling home from Swansea myself and two fellow explorers decided to take a detour through Port Talbot and take another look at the Plaza. I normally wouldn't discuss how I've accessed an abandoned building, this being the internet you never know who could be reading these words. However as I have been accused of breaking and entry in the local press, and the now the entry we took has been re secured I'm prepared to be a bit more open regarding this visit. On our return we found the boarding over one of the fire escapes hanging on by a single nail, We shone our torches past the suspended board and could see right into the foyer an teasing sight. However on this occasion a Police CCTV camera on a nearby building was pointed right at us so we thought better of squeezing past the board and wasting the police's time responding to a case of civil trespass.

A week later we made a similar diversion but this time as we turned the corner we were both delighted and surprised to the the boarding had been completely ripped off and was lying half out of the door way also the CCTV was pointed in the opposite direction so without a second thought we grabbed our cameras from the car and stepped over the board into the open doorway of cinema.

We made our way carefully up the short flight of steps into the foyer of the cinema and took a quick look at the ticket booth before making for the main attraction the centre doors which lead down a short corridor towards the main ground floor screen on as I passed through the double doors into screen one I was disappointed to find the cinema seats removed and the whole floor of the auditorium scattered with office furniture and what looked like catering tables maybe the Plaza wasn't as intact inside as I had hoped. But at least the screen was still hanging in place, It was ripped but it was still there and through the tare we could see the huge back speaker block still in place. We had the distinct feeling we weren't alone in the empty cinema and once I had climbed up on to the stage to look back out at the room we were in, not only could I see the impressive space that the main cinema auditorium occupied before it was divided up, but also the large number of pigeons looking down at us from the circle the place was infested with them.

Leaving the main screen through a side door we found ourselves at the front of what we called screen two. a much smaller and intimate room it had the intact rows of cinema seats I was hoping to find, In this room they were plush traditional red velour seats though thick with dust. When we first entered the room we were confused by the lack of a projection room and the strange mirror hanging at an angle from the back of the room, until a closer look revealed the periscope arrangement of mirrors leading to the projection room above.