The future of the nearly 100-year-old cinema has now been confirmed
The future of Woolton Picture House has been confirmed (Image: Liverpool Echo)
The new owners of Woolton Picture House have announced that the cinema has been saved after a dramatic late twist. Last year the husband and wife team behind the transformation of Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre, Kevin Fearon and Gillian Miller announced that they were hoping to complete a similar feat with Woolton Picture House, which has been closed to the public since 2020.
After provisionally agreeing to purchase the building for a sum of £450,000 from its owners, Kevin and Gillian set up Woolton Cinema Community Interest Company [CIC], a not-for-profit organisation, to help try and raise funds to buy the site and bring it into the ownership of the local community.
In the months that followed, Kevin, Gillian, their team of directors and volunteers embarked on a huge fundraising drive to try and save the cinema. It saw them temporarily reopen the cinema for special screenings over Christmas and Valentines Day, as well as collaborations with local businesses including sandwich-makers Derek’s. In that time they have also received donations large and small with values ranging from just a few pounds all the way to a £100,000 donation from Liverpool-based Crampton Bros (Coopers) Ltd.
With their deadline to raise the £450,000 set as tomorrow, Friday May 8, it can now be confirmed that they have surpassed their target, raising £532,884.
However, there has been a late twist in the bid to save the cinema, after an anonymous donation just a couple of weeks ago. A mystery donor has now bought the building outright and has leased it to Woolton Cinema CIC on a 100-year lease for a nominal rent of £19.27 a year, which is in keeping with the year that the building was opened, 1927. The £532,884 that has been raised in public donations will now go towards the building’s refurbishment. There are provisional plans to reopen the cinema in October this year.
The effort to save the cinema was led by Kevin Fearon and his partner Gillian(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
Looking back over the huge fundraising drive that has taken place over recent months, Iain Christie, one of Woolton Cinema CIC’s directors, said: “It’s been an incredible community effort. Two and a half thousand people have put their hands in their pockets and donated towards [the cinema], we know how much the building is loved and how much it’ll be used, which is an incredible boost for us.
“A huge thanks as well to all of the volunteers, all of the bigger donors, everyone who’s given their time, their money, their skills. It’s that effort that has raised that total and means that Woolton Picture House has got a future.”
While there have been a number of standout moments along the way, Iain said it was a screening last week that particularly stood out. The 48-year-old said: “What really, really got me was on Monday night just gone, we screened Cinema Paradiso, which is a film about an old cinema and the love that people have for cinema.
“The place was packed, we had 250 people in and at the end everybody stood and applauded the projectionist Dave who has been working with Woolton Picture House for about 40 years. The appreciation shown to him by the people in the audience, by the volunteers, by everyone within the organization, it was just a beautiful moment and there were tears in eyes.”
Iain Christie, a director for Woolton Cinema CIC(Image: Supplied/Iain Christie)
With the cinema’s future now secured, he hopes that he will be able to recreate many more personal memories for years to come, and said: “I remember going to the cinema with my auntie and my gran when me and my sister were little.
“I remember sitting in the non-smoking section watching the smoke rise over the smoking section and wheedle its way across as the film went on. I remember getting my ice cream at the interval. I remember rolling sweets down the file in the middle so they hit the front. Everyone’s got all those lovely memories.”
He added: “My kids are teenagers now, but when they were little I took them to the the picture house and they could have that experience of getting their ice creams and getting their their ticket given to them and three paces later having it ripped in half by the same person. It’s those kind of warm memories that I think everybody has of the picture house.”
The cinema opened in 1927(Image: Liverpool Echo)
As the cinema now prepares for the future, he said that plans are already in motion. He said: “The big plans are to try and get it into shape so it can be continue to be used as a cinema for the next 100 years.
“We’ve got an architect on the board of directors who’s already drawing up plans. We want to be really sympathetic to the 1920s design, there are some features that we’ve found that have been covered up in the 70s and the 80s and we’re going to reveal those and enhance those.”
He added: “It also needs to be in a position where people can get the level of service that they expect, the comfort of the seats, the accessibility, the standards of the facilities. All of that needs bringing up to scratch. It is a beautiful old building, but it is a very old building and there’s a lot of work that needs doing.”