Kensington The old picture house, Thorne
Kensington House, the old picture house in Thorne

Thorne · 2011–2013

A cinema, then a home.

In 2011 we bought a boarded-up cinema in Thorne and set out to make it a home. This is how Gwyn, Kate, Jac and Dylan found Kensington, the Old Picture House — how we designed it, took it apart, and built a home inside the memory of a picture house.

Watch on Channel 4

Read the story Seven chapters, from the auction to the last photographs. Look at the photographs The build, month by month. Meet the people who built it Richard the builder, Jem the architect, and the trades. Now… 13 years later Kate’s garden, the boys growing up, the house as a home.

Around the house

Kensington House finished, from the garden

The house finished · September 2013

Dan Sumption’s photographs

The most accurate record we have of Kensington when the work was done — rooms, garden, hydropool, the lot. The old Facebook album is gone. The pictures are here.

31 photographs · Thanks Dan

Then and now

The same place, becoming itself.

Two diary entries already looked backwards while the work was still going on. Dan’s photographs are the house when the work was done. What it looks like now is here.

January 2012

Then and Now

 The finished house from the garden

April 2013 · the morph, finished

Morphing progress
The garden now, through the hydroswing

Now · 13 years later

We love our house in Thorne.

Kate made the garden beautiful. The boys grew up. The seasons keep turning. What an adventure.