A DECORATIVE ballroom ceiling unseen for 50 years has just been uncovered by workmen clearing the former Bradford Odeon building.

The Telegraph & Argus has been given an exclusive tour of the building, and has photographed some of the historical features now being rediscovered.

Touring the former Odeon building isn't just like going back in time. It's like jumping around haphazardly through nearly every decade of the 20th century.

From the New Victoria, to the Gaumont, to the Odeon, the building's interior and contents are not stuck in one time warp, but several.

We stumble across a garish sign for the old bingo hall straight out of the 1980s, a music-themed floor mosaic laid in the 1950s and posters advertising films from the 1990s.

Among the rubble are original 1930s radiators, a 1960s-style Hoover vacuum cleaner and a packet of cereal dedicated to the 1990s film Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

Some areas of the building seem virtually untouched by the passage of time, while others are hugely water-damaged.

Our tour is being led by some of the people who know the building best - Mark Nicholson, secretary of campaign group BORG (the Bradford Odeon Rescue Group), Andy Grant from Bradford Council, who is managing the work to clear the building and make it safe, and Lee Craven of Bradford Live, which plans to turn the building back into a live music venue.

The real show-stopper of the tour is the original ballroom, to the side of the theatre, which hosted dances, wedding receptions and live music until it was shut up in 1962, then converted into a third, smaller cinema for the Odeon in 1988.

Mr Nicholson said: "This is the first time that members of the public have been able to see this ceiling uncovered for 50 years."

The ceiling contains glass tiles, with only a few of them now broken or missing. When the building's original glass roof was still up, above the ceiling, sunlight would have streamed in.

Mr Craven described the moment he first saw it.

He said: "I knew it was going to look good when the ceiling tiles came down, but I didn't think it was going to look this good. It has just got this fantastic patina of age."

And Mr Craven has a particularly personal connection to this very room.

He said: "I found out, after I got involved with the Odeon, that my mum and dad actually met here. So I owe my existence to this building."

Currently, Bradford Council is carrying out work to clear the building and leave it in a safe state for redevelopment. The work is being funded by the Homes and Communities Agency, as part of the deal which saw it sell the building to the Council for £1.

So far, four skips and 20 huge containers of rubbish have been filled.

Mr Grant said the clearing-out of old cinema chairs and rubble should be finished within a few weeks, and then work will start on a culvert for the Bradford Beck, which runs underneath part of the building but is in a bad state of repair.

Then comes a particularly intricate bit of work - replacing corroding metal ring beams which hold up the building's two iconic domes.

Specialist contractors will have to prop up the domes before carefully taking sections of the beams out from the inside.

Then, as long as Bradford Live's plan gets the final go-ahead later this year, they will hand over the reins in spring 2015.

Mr Grant said he was hugely enjoying working on the project.

He said: "It's because of the interest that most of Bradford has in what is going to happen to it, and the memories they have got invested in the place.

"Everyone you talk to that has grown up in Bradford has got some memory of the first film they came to see, or their first date.

"Someone will tell you, 'I always remember that date'."

In the 1960s, the old theatre was divided into three - two cinema screens and a bingo hall - with many decorative features covered by false ceilings and wooden boards.

Mr Nicholson said: "All you need to do is take an sledgehammer to a few walls, and you will open up the original theatre as-is."

For Mr Craven and the Bradford Live team, the challenge now is to draw up a detailed plan that preserves the building's Art Deco features while ensuring it is a music venue fit for the 21st century.

Mr Craven said: "The idea is to retain as much of the original fittings as possible, but not to restore everything."

He said with too much restoration, there was a danger of creating a 'Disneyland'-style pastiche.

"We have to get the right balance between old and new really, so we can appreciate the historic stuff in its context, but the building has to work for a modern audience," he said.