Located close to Penson’s Newtown Long Bridge.

Newtown’s flannel industry was celebrated during the 19th Century. The Exchange was promoted by William Pugh and local producers to house a flannel market which would attract business from elsewhere. It was built in 1832. As well as a trading floor it provided public rooms for meetings, concerts, dinners, auctions, lectures and bazaars and was also used for the assizes and quarter sessions.

Exterior

Penson provided a dignified, classical design. Scourfield and Haslam’s description in The Buildings of Wales: Powys reads: ‘Stuccoed Grecian, the detail much altered, but the scale still appreciable. The main front faces Back Lane, the advanced end bays with paired Doric pilasters; later (infilled) colonnade between.’

It is not clear when the colonnade with its handsome stone columns was provided, or whether Penson designed it: it created an impressive entrance. The following photograph suggests the stucco came later.

Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones bought the building in 1890 and refurbished it as a theatre and meeting hall: part was used as the post office. In 1920 it became the Scala Cinema. After the post office moved out in 1937 the Exchange was extensively modernised as the Regent Cinema in a contemporary art deco style.