Film buff spends £70,000 of life savings building a 34-seat ABC CINEMA in the garden of his three bed semi
Father-of-two spends four and a half years making his silver screen dreams a reality
A FILM buff has spent £70,000 of his life savings building a 34-seat cinema in his back garden.
Anderson Jones, 38, laboured for four and half years to bring the tribute to his beloved ABC movie houses to life.
The father-of-two’s creation mirrors cinemas of the 1930s with big red curtains and red seats but also has a 1970s feel to it.
He said: “I’ve been a cinema fan since as long as I can remember and since I was at school I’ve always wanted to build a cinema. I used to say to friends ‘I’m going to build a cinema in my garden.’
“They didn’t believe me.
“I’ve always been collecting things from old cinemas, especially movie posters.
“In 2010 we moved into a house with a quarter of an acre of land and not long after I won planning permission to build my cinema.
“I used to be a kitchen fitter so I can do plastering and brick laying and built the cinema myself.
“All my life savings have gone into it.
“My wife Jayne loves films and my children, Hannon who is 21 and Ethan who is 16, love the cinema too. I’ve even got their X-Box rigged up to the big screen!”
The brick building, which is adorned with an ABC sign, is 40ft long, 22ft wide and 20ft high and takes up half of the garden of his three bed semi-detached house.
The theatre, which has a 17ft by 7ft screen, has its own projection room, black and white old-style toilets and a foyer with a concessions stand that offers popcorn and sweets.
The entrance is 15 metres from the back door of bus driver Anderson’s house in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs.
Everything in the cinema – from the door handles to the exit sign – has been reclaimed from old cinemas of the past. The seats came from the ABC in Hanley in Stoke which shut down in 2000.
Anderson got hold of some original ABC carpet but didn’t have enough for his cinema so he had to approach a company with samples of the carpet and they managed to make an exact copy. It set him back a few thousand pounds but he says it was “well worth it”.
ABC Cinemas was founded in 1927. In their post-Second World War heyday there were more than 400 of them throughout Britain. But the advent of large multiplexes in the 1980s dealt them a crushing blow.
Anderson, whose grandmother used to be an usherette, has dreamed of owning his own cinema since the age of six.
He now just needs to get hold of neon lights and tidy up his garden before he can host his own premier next summer.
The cinema will only be open to family, friends and members of the Cinema Theatre Association, who will not be charged. He has even bought wife Jayne, 47, an old ABC uniform so she can be involved.
Anderson, a member of the Cinema Theatre Association, said the first film he will show will either be Back to the Future or Dirty Dancing. The cinema is intended for family, friends and fellow film lovers.
He said he will ask people who watch films there to make donations to charity.
He said: “This can’t be a business. It’s for family and friends and other members of the Cinema Theatre Association. I will ask for donations for charity.
“I want to be known as the guy who built a cinema and kept it going.
“Everything in there – from the door handles to the exit sign – have come from different cinemas. There’s a lot of history in there.”
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