The projector sits behind the screen, not in front of it. It has done since 1922, and no other working cinema in Britain does the same.
At a glance
The Kinema stands among pines at Woodhall Spa, a Lincolnshire village that grew around a mineral spring. The building began as a concert pavilion in the spa grounds, looking out over tennis courts, a croquet lawn and a bandstand; it was assembled from the remains of the Victoria Hotel’s sports pavilion after the hotel burned down in 1920. Captain, later Major, C. C. Allport converted it into a cinema by adding a corrugated iron shed at the north end and projecting onto the back of a transparent screen. It opened in September 1922 and is the only fully working cinema in the United Kingdom still using back projection.
Key facts
- Opened: September 1922, as the Pavilion Cinema
- Converted by: Captain, later Major, C. C. Allport
- Origin of the building: a concert pavilion in the spa grounds, built from the remains of the Victoria Hotel sports pavilion, which burned in 1920
- Method: back projection onto a transparent screen, from a shed added at the north end
- Distinction: the only fully functioning cinema in the UK using back projection
- Run by Allport: 1922 to 1973; then by James Green until 2013
- Screens added: a second in 1994, a third in 2019, a fourth in October 2021
- GPS: 53.155408, -0.214056 — View on Google Maps
History
Woodhall Spa was a Victorian health resort, and the Victoria Hotel was its centre until it burned down in 1920. What survived was the sports pavilion, and from its remains a concert pavilion was put up in the grounds. Two years later Allport turned it into a cinema by the simplest available means: a shed at one end, a transparent screen, and the projector behind it.
Back projection was not a gimmick in 1922. It solved a real problem, since it kept the beam out of the audience’s way in a building never designed for a projection box. A film producer of the decade is reported to have called the resulting picture the steadiest he had seen in Britain, Canada or America. The method survived because it worked and because nobody rebuilt the place.
The opening night did not go to plan: the expected film failed to arrive and the audience was shown a Charlie Chaplin instead. Allport ran the cinema for fifty-one years, until 1973, when James Green bought it and ran it until his retirement in 2013. Screens have been added since — 1994, 2019 and 2021 — but the original auditorium still works the way it did.
What you see
A low, informal building among trees, which is the opposite of what a 1920s cinema normally looks like. There is no city-centre frontage to announce, because the audience was already in the spa grounds. The additions read as additions, and the pine setting does the work a facade would do elsewhere.
The detail to look for is at the screen end. The corrugated shed that carries the projector is still there, behind the screen, and the whole arrangement of the original auditorium follows from it. A Wurlitzer organ rises before some screenings, which is the other survival worth staying for.
Practical information
- A working cinema with four screens; the original auditorium with back projection is Screen One
- Ask which screen your film is on if the historic auditorium is the reason for the visit
- Organ interludes are scheduled rather than constant — check the programme
Getting there
Woodhall Spa lies in the Lincolnshire fens, about thirty kilometres east of Lincoln. There is no longer a railway station in the village; Lincoln and Boston are the nearest, with buses on to Woodhall Spa. A car is the practical option.
Nearby
- Tyneside Cinema — the 1937 news theatre in Newcastle, listed and still running
- Cinéma Eldorado — the Dijon picture house of 1920, its facade protected
Sources
- Wikipedia, « The Kinema in the Woods » — the 1922 opening, the origin in the Victoria Hotel pavilion, Major C. C. Allport and the back-projection conversion, the opening-night Chaplin, the later owners and the added screens
- Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, entry for the Kinema — the building’s origins
- Cinema Treasures, entry 6373 — operating history
- Coordinates from the geolocated Wikimedia Commons photograph, cross-checked against Coronation Road, Woodhall Spa, in OpenStreetMap
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