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Writer's pictureDave Goble

97 The Old Cinema

Updated: Mar 1

I love spending time in this charming old place. Sometimes that’s not all I spend. Thank you to my wife Rachel for reminding me of it, and realising it was a shoo-in for a “Little History”.


A cross between a museum and an antiques warehouse, it opened on Chiswick High Road, in a former cinema, in 1979. Built almost 100 years earlier in 1887, it was originally known as Chiswick Hall and used as a ballroom and function room, being converted to, and opening as, the Royal Cinema Electric Theatre in May 1912. During its incarnation as a cinema it had several operators, including W.B. Slope in 1914 when it opened as the Cinema Royal, lasting until it closed in 1934. The building remained dark and neglected for almost two decades thereafter, apart from use briefly for parachute storage during WWII.


In the 1950's it reopened selling Victorian furniture and before long was attracting a strong export market as traditional British antiques became in vogue around Europe, America and Japan.



During the 1970s the site narrowly avoided demolition by a supermarket chain. Instead, a couple of local antique dealers obtained the freehold and refurbished the old building, retaining many of the decorative features from its days as a cinema. Selling antiques since 1979, it has been known The Old Cinema, (London’s only antiques department store), since 1986. In 1999 the interior was restored, and spread over two floors about 10,000 square feet is full of distressed and retro furniture, lighting, home accessories, bone china, glassware, jewellery and mid-century modern design classics. It is a popular local attraction that thrives to this day.


The Old Cinema today


Diversity of stock is achieved as buyers on any given morning pour over cargo from Scandinavia or the USA; while the next morning might bring a consignment of glass from Eastern Europe, lighting from Italy, or carvings and textiles from India.


Set designers for film and TV are regular visitors. For example, six vintage industrial Tolix chairs by French designer Xavier Pauchard, bought here, appear in a scene from the Bond film Skyfall, when Daniel Craig is interrogated by villain Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem).


Other pieces have made it into castles, exclusive hotels, fine restaurants, bakeries, bars and boutiques.


The following six photographs show inside, and stuff for sale there:


Inside, and stuff for sale (first of six)







Those Tolix chairs, and Bond in a bit of bother


Renovation in the '70s


Gilded dome ceiling uncovered during refurbishment, and one of the remaining features of the original cinema interior, along with the original proscenium arch (had to look that up) framing the cinema screen\


Rather like this sketch, noticed on The Old Cinema website, and borrowed here (artist unknown)


Red arrow: The Old Cinema

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