The History of the Kensington Picture House by Ken Austin

The Kensington Palace was opened on Monday 4”‘ April 1927.

The site was previously occupied by a wooden picture house that was sold and removed to Snaith where it served many years as a garage. Doncaster Gazette made reference to the Picture Palace in 1912 when a show on the Saturday afternoon was attended by the inmates and children from the workhouse who ” enjoyed the varied and animated pictures shown. A series illustrative of the Delhi durbar was highly interesting”

On the 25th Feb.1927 the Gazette stated that the new ( Kensington) Cinema was nearing completion “a handsome structure with seating for 1000 or thereabouts”

The Kensington proprietor was my grandfather Mr Percy Russell Austin who was also proprietor of the Carlton Cinema in Goole which he had opened in 1916. As early as 1912 Percy Austin had been an operator at one of the first cinemas in Leeds, the Theatre de Luxe. He then became the manager of the Picture House, Morley.

The Austin family were all involved in this cinema world. My father John Austin born in 1901 and the eldest son started life as a projectionist at the Carlton Cinema but managed the Kensington from it’s opening in 1927. Another son George became manager of the Carlton in 1931. James the youngest son became projectionist at the Kensington and the two daughters Florence and Mary also worked at the Carlton.

In 1926 John Austin married my mother Eveline. At that time he was assistant manager of the Carlton and she was an usherette there. They moved to Thorne in 1927 to open the Kensington and bought a house in Brooke Street, number 11.

l was born in 1933. Percy Austin died in March 1941 in Bartholomew Hospital, Goole, he was 65 years old.

The Carlton was bombed by a Dornier 207 on August 7th 1942 and it was due to the sterling efforts of John Austin that scarce materials were found to repair the damage and reopen once again.

In October of that year John Austin was called up for war service into the R.A.F. at the age of 41 years. He had been an active member of the local Royal Observer Corps. His wife Eveline took on the role of managing the Kensington throughout those war years. John was discharged from the R.A.F. in 1945. He was to become a director and company secretary of Carlton /Thorne Ltd.

In the 1950’s he introduced Sunday Bingo and in the early 1960’s a wide screen was installed. He negotiated the sale of the Kensington as a going concern to a small cinema chain and retired January 1967 to his new bungalow 10, Dorothy Avenue. He died in May 1971.

Kenneth Austin March 2011