Movie buff creates nostalgic ABC cinema theatre in his garden

By Gaurav Sood

January 3, 2017

4 min read

We have seen all sorts of interesting things people have created inside their home or in the backyard. This one stands right up there in our hall of fame for solo DIY creations which inspire others to make something different. 38-year old Anderson Jones from Stoke-on-Trent has built his own cinema theatre in his backyard to pay tribute to the ABC which was earlier a successful firm with more than 400 cinemas in UK. Anderson, who is a movie buff from his childhood invested almost four years and £70,000 on making this 34-seat cinema theater in his garden.

To bring back old memories, the father of two replicated ABC’s cinema of the 1930’s in the customary brick like layout. Fact that the cinema hsll is 40ft tall, 22ft wide and 20ft high means that it takes up almost half of the garden space of his three bed house which is detachable.

For movie buffs, the theatre has a 17ft by 7ft screen on which the movie is projected through a projection room. To make things look more realistic, the movie theatre comes with old-style toilets and foyer with concessions for selling popcorns and other snacks. Seats for this cinema hall comes courtesy the ABC’s hall in Hanley, Stoke which shut down back in 2000. Obviously cinemas have carpets, so he got some original ABC carpets and some samples from a company.

Other than that Anderson got things from the original ABC theaters and incorporated them in his own den. Surprisingly, the entrance of this dream like cinema hall is very close to Jones’ back door.

The only difference this theatre has from other commercial ones is that instead of buying tickets for watching a particular movie, Anderson asks for donations to a charity.

It’s not surprising that the first film he is going to show is either Back to the Future or Dirty Dancing.