Grand Designs (1999–…): Season 13, Episode 1 - The 1920s Cinema, Thorne, South Yorkshire - full transcript
With two active boys in a house sized for newlyweds the Harry's need a bigger house. But with none available in their home town of Throne they buy a dilapidated 1920's theater to turn into ...
You know, love is never
like it is in the movies.
It's so easy to fall in love
with the wrong person.
Just as, for us
romantic self-builders,
it's so easy to fall in love
with an inappropriate old building.
Like an old cinema, for example.
Thorne in South Yorkshire
is a former mining town.
It has a proud heritage
but it has seen better days.
It's the home of entrepreneur
Gwyn ap Harri and his wife Kate,
who live in this sensible house
with their two boys, Jack and Dylan.
It's been a good home,
but it's one they've outgrown.
This one?
When we bought this
it was literally
we were buying a house
that could house us
and a little baby, wasn't it?
And now we've got two kids,
seven and four, growing up.
And we've only
got a little garden here.
They've made the decision to move,
and something unusual
has caught their eye.
We wanted to find a bigger home,
couldn't find one,
and you happened to see
the cinema up for sale,
and we just looked at it
and thought,
"I don't know what you can do with
it, I reckon we can do something."
Just like the town,
it's seen its fortunes fade.
Becoming a bingo hall
then a nightclub,
and today
a tragic boarded-up eyesore.
Built in the golden age of cinema,
the 1920s,
the Kensington Palace
entertained the population
of the former mining town.
On impulse they bought the
whole cinema plot for just £90,000.
The plan being
to demolish the cinema
and build a straightforward
traditional house from scratch.
Mercifully the planning
department stepped in.
We went to the planners and
asked if we could knock it all down
and build a nice family home
and they said, "No, you can't,
it's a 1920s cinema."
Gwyn and Kate agreed
to restore the historic facade,
but they are knocking down
the remains of the 300 square metre
auditorium behind.
We are building a home, at
the end of the day, for our family,
and it's got to work for our family.
If not it'll end up being
the biggest mistake of our lives.
Oh, wow, this is it.
Unmistakable.
What you reckon? Unloved. Yeah.
Erm, it's a cinema, is it?
Or is it... Was a cinema. Yep.
What a state.
You can't make a hash of this. No.
That couldn't look any worse.
Having had no experience of building
Gwyn has called up an old school
friend, now a building designer.
What he's come up with at the back
is radical in design,
a vast uncompromising structure
made almost entirely of concrete.
So you're putting
lots of concrete in.
We are, yes. Yes? Yes.
This is the kind of thing
you planned, five years ago?
No. Not at all.
No, well my idea at first was...
our architect said find out loads
of things you like out of magazines,
cut them up and send them to us,
and I was sending lovely
twee pictures of little cottages,
and images that I thought were me.
And I think basically
he just binned them and just drew
this really contemporary new bit
to the building.
Thankfully they're open-minded,
as what he's designed
is a brutalist concrete building,
quite at odds
with what Kate had expected.
The classic Edwardian brick front
of the building will be restored.
Behind the facade, however, there's
a plan for something extreme.
The 900-seat auditorium
has been demolished
where a large walled garden
with a cantilevered garage,
pool house and spa will sit.
The building's structure
will mix old and new,
concrete frame with floors,
and even walls, of concrete,
left with all the marks
of the timber shuttering.
This part new and part old
cinema vestibule
will hold kitchen,
dining and living areas,
leading to the garden
via a giant hydraulic hangar door.
Upstairs there will be a spare room
and two identical bedrooms
for the boys,
separated by a family bathroom.
Their designer's
passion for concrete
once more appears in the master
bedroom and adjoining wet room.
There's also a roof terrace
sitting below
what was once the projector room,
now to be a home cinema.
The big action feature
of the back of the house however
will be the reproduction
rejection apertures,
they dominate an elevation of
white render and panels of timber.
Their project budget is £350,000,
but their friend's design
is so daring and raw
that Gwyn and Kate, it seems,
are still coming to terms with it.
Have you ever visited
a concrete house?
Have you done your research here?
No. No.
We've seen loads
of photographs and pictures.
You've never experienced... it's one
thing to look at the photographs,
it's quite another thing to actually
visit a place.
You've never been? No.
We want to. Bit late!
What is
your motivation for doing all this?
We doing it for the family,
aren't we?
We're doing it for the kids
to have a bigger garden.
But surely there are many easier
ways of getting a bigger garden.
Yeah, there are. There really are.
Bit of adventure, isn't it?
Is something missing
in your relationship?
It's not what most people do,
I'm really interested
by why people build.
Because to build from scratch,
you sort of understand,
people fall in love
with ancient buildings
and repair them delicately
because they're romantic
and have love for the past.
This is not one nor the other.
We had the chance to build
a detached house
on a fairly decent-sized plot
without going to
the trouble of purchasing a cinema,
so it wasn't just about that.
So what is it about this project
that then...
We live in Thorne, we've
lived in Thorne quite a while,
we live just up the road, and
we love it here, we love this town.
And so much of Thorne
is falling apart,
and it's been left to fall apart,
and I don't believe this town
deserves that,
and I suppose there's a bit of,
let's do a little bit for Thorne,
and at the same time we get a
unique house, and I get the garden.
Where the cinema's auditorium
once stood,
Kate plans to develop
a good-sized walled garden
and Gwyn has a boy's own idea
for how to access it.
Most people have bifolds, but
we thought that was a bit boring,
so we found this company
that does hangar doors,
you know, for aeroplanes to come out?
No, I don't know.
OK, so it's going to be
like four metre high window
and it's going to hinge like that
and come out like that
to form a canopy. Good lord!
Sounds quite interesting.
All right, isn't it?
Are you excited about that then?
I've been bullied into it.
No, not bullied.
Let her answer for herself!
I do like the idea
but I foresee things going wrong,
I don't think it's been done before,
so I'm nervous of it, but...
Is there a part of you
which still hankers
for that traditional country house?
Definitely, but what
I think this place will bring
is that because of the older style
front of the house
I would like to keep the bit
that's existing
in a more traditional style.
At the present rate, however,
there's not going to be much left.
It's like watching a Tyrannosaurus
rex trying to eat your building.
Construction costs.
Yeah.
Do you know what they are, because
it's quite hard to know how
much he's going to leave standing,
of course, and how
much of that is going to be usable,
but do you have a rough idea?
We want it to be less than 350 grand,
for it all in.
Is that funded from mortgages then?
No, we're not borrowing yet,
we might have to, but
it depends on my business. OK.
Business is going well
at the moment, is it?
Yes, it's going great. At the moment.
That's a rare thing in a recession.
It is. Yes.
It's not all destruction, though,
work has also uncovered hidden gems.
Look, there's a bit of green here.
Look. Wow.
Architectural echoes
from the cinema's heyday.
Look at that.
There's a zigzag in it. Oh, that's
beautiful. It's all right, isn't it?
And then there
are two shades of green.
It's unbelievable, isn't it?
It's quite wonderful.
We were going to have
polished concrete on the floor.
You've got polished concrete,
that's exactly what this is.
This is polished concrete with
aggregate in it
which has been cut back, polished,
it's just done with infinite care
and patience and coloured pigment.
It's really nice, isn't it?
It is nice.
By the time it's polished up
and shiny, imagine glossy,
it will be like marble, it would
look really quite something else.
This fine building holds precious
memories for the people of Thorne.
This project could be
more than just a home,
it has the potential to become
a symbolic restoration
of pride in the town.
However,
with every bite of that machine,
another little nugget
of history disappears.
And boy, with a machine like that,
is it easy
to take just that
little bite too much.
It's two months since work started
at the former cinema in Thorne.
The demolition monsters have moved
on and sand blasters have
taken their place,
removing crusty paint
and mould from the decaying
cinema's bricks.
Whenever Gwyn's not busy running his
educational software business,
he's lending a hand on site.
It's absolutely fantastic
I can't keep my eyes off it.
It's like...backwards painting,
it's like they're painting bricks
back onto my house.
However, Gwyn and Kate are not going
to be living in a house of bricks
but one of concrete.
It's a building material that
divides opinion.
This is the National Theatre
in London, on the South Bank,
designed by Denys Lasdun
in the 1960s.
He was one of Britain's great
architects
and it's a series of brutalist
blocks and planes and platforms.
When it was first built,
the Prince of Wales said it
looked like a nuclear power station.
Sir John Betjeman, the poet
and conservationist, he loved it.
And that controversy
persists until this day.
And look, it is made entirely,
inside and out,
from board-marked concrete.
I mean, this is
Gwyn and Kate's living room.
You see, I think that Gwyn
and Kate are remarkably brave.
Concrete is normally associated with
car parks rather than craftsmanship
and yet when you juxtapose
it with carpets,
upholstery and lighting, it takes
on an entirely different quality,
a much more luxurious character.
Their concrete seems acceptable
in a large public building in London
but it is radical
for a home in Thorne.
Gwyn and Kate have
so far been faithfully
following the architectural
vision of their friend
Jeremy Southgate.
So, not before time,
they're going to visit a house
that has plenty of exposed
board-marked concrete inside.
It's quite nerve-racking
cos I'm not sure what will happen
if I don't like it!
Well, you know...
Back to the drawing board.
Yeah.
This house was also designed by
Gwyn's school friend Jeremy
who's something of
a concrete evangelist.
One of the new ideas that we
introduced to them was using
concrete as a domestic material.
For us, it was partly
because the existing building,
bits of it were in concrete and
we really wanted to build on that,
and also because
we just loved concrete.
I think concrete in this country
does definitely have a bad
reputation
but it's time to reclaim it.
I'm just taking it all in.
I'm thinking of possibly putting
in a skylight, something like this,
where we get this nice
flood of light straight down
and it really highlights
the texture of the concrete wall.
Concrete's eco-credentials have
taken a bashing, not least from me,
but it remains immensely durable
and capable of different identities.
So this is board-marked concrete
and you can see, literally, it is
the marks of the boards that we
use to make the formwork.
It's sort of like pouring
jelly into a mould.
If you said you had a big concrete
plinth in the middle of your
house, you'd say "Don't be daft",
but this looks just normal,
doesn't it?
Gwyn seems sold but Kate has been
uncertain about their concrete
from the start.
That's better than
I imagined it would look and
I can see that fitting in our house.
It's really nice to see it in a home
and see that it does work but,
you know, I think it can work for us
as well so it's been really useful.
They've been at work on site for
five months now and a cleaned
facade has begun to yield
some of its architectural secrets.
It's looking very different,
isn't it? What do you think?
It cleaned up really, really well
in the end. Yes.
Is this stone?
No. It was difficult to see before.
Is it concrete? It's concrete.
It's all concrete.
It's not too bad, is it?
On the whole,
it looks pretty sharp, yes.
I knew it was going to be nice
but I didn't think it would be
this beautiful.
Now it has a real palatial
quality about it.
Now, where is my terrazzo floor
that I so lovingly discovered,
polished and swept?!
Um...
It got dug out on my orders!
It wasn't me, it wasn't me.
It was me!
I...
I'm slightly gobsmacked, Kate,
because it was beautiful.
I spent days chipping
round the corners,
trying to work out how we could
keep it all. You did, didn't you?
There were loads of reasons
to be honest.
One, you didn't like it...
It reminded me
of my school toilet floors!
SHE LAUGHS
It was the ?6,000 restoration bill
and it's just a massive heat sink.
'My beautiful 1920s terrazzo floor
has been lost and replaced with vast
'amounts of modern concrete and
there's plenty more of it to come.'
'Gwyn and Kate's builder Richard
Wilson is also a long-time friend.
'Today he's taking
delivery of the heavy moulds or
'formwork into which they'll pour
their board-marked concrete walls.'
It's beefy stuff, this,
isn't it? Yes.
'There's a great deal of preparation
as these walls, once poured,
'will not only be structural
but also have their final finish.'
You're asking Richard to build
your wall, plaster it, paint it,
wallpaper, you know. In one.
In one!
With no mistakes.
With no mistakes.
You can't...
You can't cock it up. No.
If you don't like it, you'll have to
wallpaper it! Yes!
'Setting the moulds precisely
and filling them
'with concrete can take up
to five days
'so they'll have to wait to see if
their board-mark effect works.'
What's interesting is that
although the facade is all about
the street,
the way you've organised the
building is all about the garden.
It's going to be splendid.
All accessible through this
Thunderbird II hatch.
The Gwindow! The Gwindow!
What, does that fit in between
these...?
Yes, all in between here, yeah,
and it will hydraulically move up.
Bonkers!
Bonkers.
'Gwyn's idea for the window
sounds mad
'but it could work in providing
that connection to Kate's garden.
'She's being painstakingly
reclaiming bricks
from the rubble for her walls.'
How was that?
It was cold, it was hard work,
but it was...
Yeah, it was enjoyable.
So, are you finding yourself more
and more fired up,
more empowered, really,
to make decisions? Yes, definitely.
I think, at the beginning, it did
seem that it was Gwyn, Jem, Rich.
It was them who were sort of
posting e-mails to each other,
and I sort of distanced myself
from it.
It was just a case of, "Just get
it built, I want to live in it,
"that's all I want."
Whereas now I'm enjoying this
whole process of it
and getting involved and stuff,
so that's really good.
Board-marked concrete may have found
its home on London's South Bank
in the 1960s,
but today we can find out
whether it works in traditional
red brick Thorne.
The concrete was poured into moulds
and, having now set, they can
uncover the spanking grey finish
to their living room walls.
Steady, Bill.
Hold it there.
CREAKING
Is it all right? Yes, missed it.
Thank God.
'It's not a good start.
'Luckily, their concrete walls
aren't damaged.'
That's working, isn't it? Yes.
There's loads of texture.
This is what I had in my mind.
This is what I was hoping for.
Yes, this is... It's concrete, Gwyn.
It's pretty cool, isn't it? Yes.
As work progresses, it's becoming
increasingly difficult to hide
the radical ambitions of Gwyn
and Kate's home from curious locals.
Whenever Kate's in the local shops,
she's always hearing that we've
run out of money again!
HE LAUGHS
But she doesn't say anything,
it doesn't really matter.
Some of them think that we're crazy
and we probably are a little bit
crazy but, you know...
Everything that we've done,
we can justify.
He may need to do just that.
Thorne Needs You, a pressure group
to set up to promote regeneration
in the area,
are inspecting a number
of building sites in the town.
Gwyn and Kate's will be one of them.
I got fed up with people saying what
a tip the place was,
what a state all
of the old buildings were in.
A lot of the old buildings in Thorne
have been pulled down
and shouldn't have been.
Gwyn and Kate's project has
become more than just
the building of a home.
They're restoring a local landmark
with all of its associated memories.
In 1949, Jerry was in front of us
in the queue and we got talking
and then he said, "Do you come
often to the cinema?"
So I said, "Oh, yes,
I usually come once a week."
He said "Well, why don't you come
with me next week?"
This is the gallery,
this is where you two first snogged!
THEY LAUGH
I'm so pleased that the whole thing
isn't just being pulled down.
Absolutely, yes.
I've never seen anything like it
before. It's just wonderful.
I think it's fantastic.
It's really, really inspiring,
Really aspirational for a small
town like Thorne.
You know, all over this little
market town of Thorne,
people are beginning now to buy up
buildings and restore them.
Urban regeneration, by the way,
is not something
that is government-led.
Its energy doesn't reside
in quangos
and in initiatives and policies.
It starts with
a declaration of faith in a place.
It starts with somebody opening
a little cafe
or like Gwyn
and Kate, building a house.
It's now July and the whole
family are on-site to witness
the final delivery of more concrete.
Oh, did you see that?
Where is it?
It's gone right up through
the pump there.
It's taken, like, three or
four months to do it
but the whole structural part
of the building will be finished
and I'm really, really excited today.
By the end of today, they'll have
poured over 400 tonnes of concrete.
I think the lads are a bit
sick of the sight of concrete.
Yes, we like it. Love it.
Don't stand there too long, Rich!
THEY LAUGH
Following the final pour,
the brutal yet sharp concrete
form of Gwyn and Kate's challenging
building is clearly visible.
Work is moving on apace.
No, thanks to a new member of the
building team.
Gwyn's off for the summer
and on-site as a labourer.
Are you trying to save...
You know, cut corners?
Not really, no.
The logical thing for me to do is to
work and then pay someone.
I suppose also there's that thing
about wanting to be involved?
Exactly.
I know every part of this house.
I've knocked the plaster
off most of it!
How is the money?
It's fine now.
Meaning? We applied for a mortgage
which we've got... Yes.
...but it's taken eight months
so luckily we managed
to pay the guys on site,
we had enough to pay
the guys on site.
Line up, will you,
as you go along. Sorry, mate!
So, where does that put your budget?
I think it's going to end
up around about the 400 mark.
'That's 50,000 more than
they intended to spend.
'I'm wondering just how much radical
change, how much concrete,
can Gwyn and Kate stomach?'
We came to a bit of a wall with
all of the concrete stuff.
We got to an amount where we were,
like, "What about putting
"up studwork and it'll be done
quicker and it'll be done cheaper."
And it was the concrete guy,
Sean, who basically told you to
hold your nerve and, you know...
that it's been designed and you're
going to lose what you set out
to achieve and so we stuck with it.
I think we're at the limit
now with concrete!
THEY LAUGH
I have to remind myself that Gwyn
and Kate are going on more than
a personal concrete adventure.
Their product's high-profile
and they've got the whole
town along for a ride.
As their concrete
contractor said to them,
a bit of advice that
I really think applies here,
don't lose your nerve.
At the old cinema in Thorne,
it's a hive of activity.
The insulation
and the studwork are going in
and Ian the joiner is
putting in 24 wooden window frames.
It'll go.
I think that brickwork
needs cleaning off.
Gwyn's solution to waterproofing
the flat roofs and terraces is,
as you'd expect from him, hi tech.
They heat up the two drums
of chemicals,
shoot them into two pipes,
then spray it out and as the
chemicals are sprayed,
it makes a chemical reaction
and forms plastic that'll
last for ages.
At the front of the building,
the recast concrete
lintels are now in place.
And there's one addition
I wasn't expecting.
'Up top, the old projector room's
been rebuilt
'with a roof that sticks out
over the facade.'
Oh, dear.
What on earth is that, eh?
And it was all going so well.
Gwyn...
what's that thing on your roof?
What do you mean "thing on my roof"?
Object. How you doing?
How are you? That object, that lump.
"Lump"?!
That big box...that nun's wimple.
That elegant floating roof,
you mean?
Diving board.
"Diving board"?!
A beautiful Edwardian facade
with that...box.
Yeah, but it'll be rendered white
so it will disappear into the sky.
On a cloudy day.
Cloudy sky, yeah.
OK.
There's nothing wrong with it.
What do you know?
THEY LAUGH
In the end, it's my opinion
versus yours. Yeah?
I can give you a hard time.
And you come back.
It's not like you're insecure
about any of these decisions.
You're strong about them.
I used to be really nervous of how
people would judge it,
maybe how they'd judge me,
especially people in Thorne,
and I think I'm past worrying now.
I wouldn't say it's new
territory for you, but it's...
Completely new territory. It is.
Completely.
What does it look
like from the back, then?
Let's have a look.
Oh! Now we're talking!
It's great, isn't it?
Do you like it?
What's the black spray at the top?
That's the waterproofing
that's just come over.
It looks like a concrete bunker
someone's set fire to.
HE LAUGHS
I think the triumphant elements are
the projection holes.
We had to pull down the actual
original room, but we
kept the holes.
It was originally designed with
loads of little holes
all over that wall. Right.
A bit like, there's a window
that Le Corbusier did...
Oh, yeah, I know the one.
HE LAUGHS
Do you?
Do I(?)
SHE LAUGHS
Imagine if you put more of those in,
that it would ever have
the same quality.
I'll Google it.
I'm not ever going to be taken
seriously again, am I?
'In order to restore my credentials,
'let me tell you about Le Corbusier,
'perhaps the father of modernism,
'who built extensively in concrete.
'The chapel at Ronchamp in France,
'completed in 1955,
'is almost entirely
formed from the stuff,
'perforated with seemingly random,
'deep-set, small windows,
'so it's not incidental that
the projector room
'windows remind me of Ronchamp.'
What's upstairs on the top floor?
I've never been up.
All the studwork's done up here.
You're ready for your first fix
- your wiring and everything?
Yeah, we just need
to get it watertight.
What will this be, Gwyn?
The projector room where the
original projector was,
so it will be the cinema room.
HE LAUGHS
I normally groan
when people say "cinema room",
but of all places, of all houses,
you've got to have one, haven't you?
Yeah. Fantastic.
'Our modernist-inspired
concrete home
'with a cinema room is all
very exciting,
'especially for Thorne.
'So it's no surprise that
the emerging building
'continues to be a talking point.'
This is about the town as much
as it's about you, isn't it?
People now are noticing
and talking about it, aren't they?
Yeah, to our faces,
really positively.
I've been told the local
community group here
consider this building to be
rather important.
And that you are something
of a poster boy.
HE LAUGHS
I don't think so.
That's for others to judge.
We'd rather make where we are better
than move somewhere else.
Freezing conditions in January
have brought work on site to
a virtual standstill.
Only Ian the joiner is
toughing it out.
We're waiting for the render,
basically.
It's stopping all the other
jobs from happening.
We have to put the render on
before we put all the...
balustrade on, the cladding on,
and before we get it all
weather-tight,
so it's stopping everything, really.
This break has allowed them
time to think
just how far they've come.
We knew nothing about architecture,
nothing about modernism.
We're really pushing our boundaries
of what we know in terms of
taste, you know.
Kate uses these two words, she says,
"I want it to be traditional.
"It's a bit too modern."
I'm like, "What's modern
and what's traditional?"
But I know what she means -
she wants things to feel homely.
Concrete wall, OK.
Picture of us, brilliant.
Homely.
As progress slows on site,
Gwyn's taking Kate and builder Rich
to a factory in Preston
to see how his pet project,
the hydraulic hanger door,
or "Gwyndow" is coming on.
The factory usually build
aircraft hanger doors
and their products have never been
used on a house before.
What do you reckon to that, Kate?
This is the smallest door
they've ever made.
Unfortunately, it's too small.
Those feet will need extending
to fit into the concrete
that's there now.
That angle's all going to
want altering.
So that angle's not right.
Due to a communications breakdown,
the factory have been given
the wrong dimensions,
so they've made the frame
to the wrong specifications.
The joiners here have pointed out
it's not just the size, there are
other flaws in Gwyn's idea.
There's a few problems with it.
It's not thermally broken,
so it means
that we'll get condensation
on the inside.
I just went along with it,
thinking, "Well,
"when it's shut, it'll work,"
but then you start realising it's
all the edges, you can
have draughts, and now it just
seems like a lot of hard work.
HE SIGHS
Kate's not very
happy about the situation.
She just wants to give it up
as a bad job.
I will put my foot
down at the end of the day -
if I have to, I will.
Cos I've got to live in it.
..The two things.
What's that?
I'm just saying we need to separate
the business of money
and us getting a door.
But the problem is,
at the beginning you convinced me
to have this door in the first
place, didn't you? Yes.
And now it's all falling apart,
so I'm a bit like,
"Why have it?"
It's not the door's falling apart.
The door's not made,
it can't fall apart.
We can solve the problems, Kate.
Gwyn is the problem, though!
SHE LAUGHS
HE SIGHS
The Gwyndow situation is unresolved,
but there is some good news.
The render is at last on
and the house is being clad in pine.
Softwood isn't normally
used for cladding,
but this is special.
It's called ThermoWood.
It's actually
pine that's been baked
this past 20 years
but it's cheaper than larch.
It weathers really dark,
like a black-brown colour,
which we really like.
We went to see
the Discovery Centre in Cleethorpes
and saw it there
and it looked absolutely beautiful.
If you just look up there,
there's the cladding and render
and the concrete together -
it looks absolutely beautiful.
In fact,
I always thought it was
like a bold house,
but it's really pretty.
I didn't know it would look
as nice as that.
It's beautiful, it's a picture.
Now watertight, they're starting
work on the interiors
but face a new dilemma.
How do you furnish a concrete home?
Jeremy Southgate,
who designed the house,
is back to inspect the work
and to see how Gwyn and Kate will
rise to this design challenge.
Gwyn and Kate have been fantastic at
getting into the spirit of what
the house was designed to do.
There is a certain way that
the weight of the architecture
does almost dictate
the way you live in the space.
The other stuff you need to
get in for moving in
is the lights and stuff like that.
I find that really difficult -
lighting.
I don't think I've ever bought
a decent light in my life.
We just went to B&Q
and bought a ?20 lampshade.
HE LAUGHS
That's what we used to do.
Going to get the new,
L-shaped sofa in there,
and then bring our table
from our house
in for the dining room, here.
When it comes to the interior,
Gwyn and Kate seem rather lost.
They'll have to find their way and
take some cues from the building.
It's not my place
to impose something on them
that I think
is the correct thing.
At the end of the day,
they're living here, not me.
Cos we couldn't get
the pool table in,
we're going to put
a mirror ball up there.
HE LAUGHS
Last time I visited
the former cinema
in the heart of redbrick Thorne,
Gwyn and Kate hadn't a clue how
to furnish their concrete home
and their landmark house was still
shrouded in scaffolding.
Wow.
Wow!
Now the Edwardian cinema front
is beautifully restored
in every detail,
topped off with that rendered white
plinth jutting out over the facade.
The nun's wimple is still there,
though, isn't it?
They must be showing
The Sound Of Music this week.
It's an addition which suggests
there is more beyond the brick.
Hello! Hi! How are you?
Fine, thank you.
You all right? You're both very
summery and relaxed.
In sandals and stuff.
Where are the site boots? And hard
hats? They've gone now. Yeah.
Hey, diving board! Look at it.
It's lovely, isn't it?
That's a 30 metre, that one.
Anyway, do you want to come in?
Right.
Gwyn and Kate seem quite
the masters of their home,
completely at ease
with its double character
and assertive that what they've
done here is good.
Well, now...
You see, I thought you were going to
put down a polished concrete floor,
just the usual bog-standard
grey thing.
Right, yeah.
I've been working myself into a bit
of a lather about
that terrazzo, you know,
disappearing.
But this is really good, isn't it?
This is so rarely done.
People often polish their concrete.
This involves grinding
right into the surface
and then polishing it up slowly.
It is completely smooth
and polished. Yeah, yeah.
You can see the reflection...
I know.
Look, across there,
like a piece of marble.
It's different to this, which is...
This approach is basically leave
what you find there. Yeah.
Complete with shrapnel marks.
Yeah. That's great.
And it's on the other side as well.
Look. I like that.
I like that a lot.
This is proving worth
the admission fee.
As in a cinema, these spaces are
generous, theatrical.
A flawless white kitchen overlooks
an uber-fashionable mix of
old and new,
rough and smooth...wood...
..and concrete.
I tell you what, this
is monumental, Gwyn.
GWYN LAUGHS
And in true theatrical style,
there has to be a show,
provided here not by bifold doors,
but the Gwyndow.
We did it. This is
a piece of engineering!
HE LAUGHS
I do like the sculptures either
side. That's very avant-garde. Yeah.
I can't believe you've not pressed
the button yet. I daren't!
I don't know what do.
That one, dude, there.
This one? Yeah. Press it!
Press it!
There you go. Amazing.
Where's the theme music?
GWYN LAUGHS
KEVIN MIMICS THEME MUSIC
Takes a while. Yeah, yeah.
You put your finger on the button
and we'll come back later.
I want to go and look at this
wall over here. Come on.
Are you pleased with this? Yeah.
Kate's opinion of concrete
has of course changed.
Like the appearance
of the material itself.
I think of this not
exactly as frozen velvet,
but it's got a kind of...
It looks soft. Yeah.
It looks softer than what it is.
I can't resist touching it. And that
has to be a good thing, doesn't?
An attractive quality, you know.
Rather than just a block of
concrete, it's more than that now.
This reminds me of the somewhat
lavish board-marked concrete
I saw at the National Theatre
because of the same way
it's set against much more
luxurious, softer materials.
It's actually assumed a
luxurious quality itself.
Is it up? It's nearly there!
There you go, look. Oh, my good lord.
You've got to be impressed by that,
Kevin, come on.
You're a man, come on.
I'll tell you when I'm impressed!
I'll tell you when I'm impressed!
I'm impressed now.
Now that it's horizontal,
it's suddenly become a roof. Yeah.
What a brilliant thing.
Against all the odds, Gwyn, Richard
and the joiners together made this
hydraulic wonder work.
No, we're really happy with it.
I mean, it was a lot of stress.
Something like this requires that
bit of extra effort. Yes.
Especially when I'm there going,
"No, don't do it!" What does it
look like from the back?
How does the projector room look?
Your bit of Corbusier?
THEY LAUGH
It's all right, isn't it? It's such
a building of two halves, this.
They've restored the historic
front,
but out back it's all Hollywood
Hills, heralding a new architectural
age for Thorne, complete with some
Hollywood bling.
This is our hydro pool. It's amazing.
Oh, I prefer my pool with a few more
jets!
THEY LAUGH
And controls.
It looks like you've got
a bit of a space shuttle
and filled it with water.
It is. No, it's great
and the kids absolutely love it.
Well, I hope it makes you very
happy. Thank you!
From the start,
Gwyn and Kate expressed
a lack of confidence in their taste,
but no longer.
This place is sophisticated.
This is a beautiful white kitchen.
There's a sort of luxuriousness
in this building, you know.
The chrome, the white kitchen, the
polished floor. There's a kind of...
Against the kind of roughness
of the concrete.
'Mercifully, not all
of the old cinema was demolished.
'Its historic concrete beams are
still out on show.'
They look like...
honed limestone.
Oh, you did it! More concrete. Yeah.
So where the old stuff leaves off,
the new stuff takes over. Yeah.
That's right, yeah.
A concrete shower! Yeah.
A concrete shower. Yes.
THEY LAUGH
Yeah, he did it.
YORKSHIRE ACCENT: Drink Yorkshire
tea and take a concrete shower!
THEY LAUGH
Oh...
I think it's a beautiful thing, made
more beautiful by the skylight.
Raising the wall with that
top light.
Private breakfast deck.
'This used to
be the gallery of the cinema.
'It's now a great vantage point to
watch the boys making
'the most of their new garden.'
I don't normally say this, but I
would like to see your cinema room.
It's up there.
Beckoning.
At the very top of the building is
the room where the cinema's
projector once stood.
With those two big
windows at the front
and these little ones at the back...
Yeah. It's a light room, isn't it?
The roofscape of Thorne is
actually rather wonderful,
with all these old red chimney
pots and the old brewery. Yeah.
The building is encapsulated here,
isn't it? Mm.
The old at the front
and the new at the back,
but at the same time,
the history of the place.
'46 years after the curtain fell
on the Kensington Palace Cinema,
'the building once again has
a projector room which,
'alongside so many things here,
can continue to entertain.
'Gwyn's ended up with an entry level
James Bond villain's lair,
'so I'm interested to know
how far they've strayed
'from the constraints
of their original ?350,000 budget.'
How much did it really, really cost?
It cost us 450. For everything.
Does that include the cost of the
site? Yeah, yeah. Everything? Yeah.
Well, that's good!
I mean, I can see money like that
disappearing into a project
like the window.
You've got quite a conspicuous
building all of a sudden
which, you know, is a landmark.
People appreciate the fact that,
you know,
we've been brave
and that we've done it here.
I love the old bit, you know,
that means so much,
that we've done that in Thorne,
in our home town.
We've made it look good again.
As a project, as a sort of milestone
in your life of achievements,
where does this come?
Oh, you know, at the top.
I mean, I don't know what more a man
can do than provide
a beautiful home for his family.
It's remarkable how at ease these
two are with concrete living.
It doesn't feel weird at all.
Some bits I look at and I go,
wow, because it's so nice and it's
so new-looking,
but it does feel like home.
They've pursued a powerful idea here
and they've saved
a much-loved landmark.
Do you think there's a bit
of the cinema soul still here?
I think so.
It's had a happy feeling
since the day we unscrewed that
board on the front and walked
in and it was full of pigeon poo
and everything, and there wasn't a
bad feeling in here, was there? No.
Not at all. That's the point about a
cinema,
it's a picture house, it's a
place... It's to entertain. Yeah.
What lovely traits to
inherit in a building.
What a great premise for future
happiness.
And of course there's one
other thing.
Do you know, I never cease to be
amazed by the power
of buildings to effect change,
to change us, to change
who we are, to change a place,
to change even the fortunes
of a place.
Hell, we can regenerate
towns like this all over Britain
one cinema at a time.
We need more Gwyns and Kates
to go on their own
all-action architectural adventure.
like it is in the movies.
It's so easy to fall in love
with the wrong person.
Just as, for us
romantic self-builders,
it's so easy to fall in love
with an inappropriate old building.
Like an old cinema, for example.
Thorne in South Yorkshire
is a former mining town.
It has a proud heritage
but it has seen better days.
It's the home of entrepreneur
Gwyn ap Harri and his wife Kate,
who live in this sensible house
with their two boys, Jack and Dylan.
It's been a good home,
but it's one they've outgrown.
This one?
When we bought this
it was literally
we were buying a house
that could house us
and a little baby, wasn't it?
And now we've got two kids,
seven and four, growing up.
And we've only
got a little garden here.
They've made the decision to move,
and something unusual
has caught their eye.
We wanted to find a bigger home,
couldn't find one,
and you happened to see
the cinema up for sale,
and we just looked at it
and thought,
"I don't know what you can do with
it, I reckon we can do something."
Just like the town,
it's seen its fortunes fade.
Becoming a bingo hall
then a nightclub,
and today
a tragic boarded-up eyesore.
Built in the golden age of cinema,
the 1920s,
the Kensington Palace
entertained the population
of the former mining town.
On impulse they bought the
whole cinema plot for just £90,000.
The plan being
to demolish the cinema
and build a straightforward
traditional house from scratch.
Mercifully the planning
department stepped in.
We went to the planners and
asked if we could knock it all down
and build a nice family home
and they said, "No, you can't,
it's a 1920s cinema."
Gwyn and Kate agreed
to restore the historic facade,
but they are knocking down
the remains of the 300 square metre
auditorium behind.
We are building a home, at
the end of the day, for our family,
and it's got to work for our family.
If not it'll end up being
the biggest mistake of our lives.
Oh, wow, this is it.
Unmistakable.
What you reckon? Unloved. Yeah.
Erm, it's a cinema, is it?
Or is it... Was a cinema. Yep.
What a state.
You can't make a hash of this. No.
That couldn't look any worse.
Having had no experience of building
Gwyn has called up an old school
friend, now a building designer.
What he's come up with at the back
is radical in design,
a vast uncompromising structure
made almost entirely of concrete.
So you're putting
lots of concrete in.
We are, yes. Yes? Yes.
This is the kind of thing
you planned, five years ago?
No. Not at all.
No, well my idea at first was...
our architect said find out loads
of things you like out of magazines,
cut them up and send them to us,
and I was sending lovely
twee pictures of little cottages,
and images that I thought were me.
And I think basically
he just binned them and just drew
this really contemporary new bit
to the building.
Thankfully they're open-minded,
as what he's designed
is a brutalist concrete building,
quite at odds
with what Kate had expected.
The classic Edwardian brick front
of the building will be restored.
Behind the facade, however, there's
a plan for something extreme.
The 900-seat auditorium
has been demolished
where a large walled garden
with a cantilevered garage,
pool house and spa will sit.
The building's structure
will mix old and new,
concrete frame with floors,
and even walls, of concrete,
left with all the marks
of the timber shuttering.
This part new and part old
cinema vestibule
will hold kitchen,
dining and living areas,
leading to the garden
via a giant hydraulic hangar door.
Upstairs there will be a spare room
and two identical bedrooms
for the boys,
separated by a family bathroom.
Their designer's
passion for concrete
once more appears in the master
bedroom and adjoining wet room.
There's also a roof terrace
sitting below
what was once the projector room,
now to be a home cinema.
The big action feature
of the back of the house however
will be the reproduction
rejection apertures,
they dominate an elevation of
white render and panels of timber.
Their project budget is £350,000,
but their friend's design
is so daring and raw
that Gwyn and Kate, it seems,
are still coming to terms with it.
Have you ever visited
a concrete house?
Have you done your research here?
No. No.
We've seen loads
of photographs and pictures.
You've never experienced... it's one
thing to look at the photographs,
it's quite another thing to actually
visit a place.
You've never been? No.
We want to. Bit late!
What is
your motivation for doing all this?
We doing it for the family,
aren't we?
We're doing it for the kids
to have a bigger garden.
But surely there are many easier
ways of getting a bigger garden.
Yeah, there are. There really are.
Bit of adventure, isn't it?
Is something missing
in your relationship?
It's not what most people do,
I'm really interested
by why people build.
Because to build from scratch,
you sort of understand,
people fall in love
with ancient buildings
and repair them delicately
because they're romantic
and have love for the past.
This is not one nor the other.
We had the chance to build
a detached house
on a fairly decent-sized plot
without going to
the trouble of purchasing a cinema,
so it wasn't just about that.
So what is it about this project
that then...
We live in Thorne, we've
lived in Thorne quite a while,
we live just up the road, and
we love it here, we love this town.
And so much of Thorne
is falling apart,
and it's been left to fall apart,
and I don't believe this town
deserves that,
and I suppose there's a bit of,
let's do a little bit for Thorne,
and at the same time we get a
unique house, and I get the garden.
Where the cinema's auditorium
once stood,
Kate plans to develop
a good-sized walled garden
and Gwyn has a boy's own idea
for how to access it.
Most people have bifolds, but
we thought that was a bit boring,
so we found this company
that does hangar doors,
you know, for aeroplanes to come out?
No, I don't know.
OK, so it's going to be
like four metre high window
and it's going to hinge like that
and come out like that
to form a canopy. Good lord!
Sounds quite interesting.
All right, isn't it?
Are you excited about that then?
I've been bullied into it.
No, not bullied.
Let her answer for herself!
I do like the idea
but I foresee things going wrong,
I don't think it's been done before,
so I'm nervous of it, but...
Is there a part of you
which still hankers
for that traditional country house?
Definitely, but what
I think this place will bring
is that because of the older style
front of the house
I would like to keep the bit
that's existing
in a more traditional style.
At the present rate, however,
there's not going to be much left.
It's like watching a Tyrannosaurus
rex trying to eat your building.
Construction costs.
Yeah.
Do you know what they are, because
it's quite hard to know how
much he's going to leave standing,
of course, and how
much of that is going to be usable,
but do you have a rough idea?
We want it to be less than 350 grand,
for it all in.
Is that funded from mortgages then?
No, we're not borrowing yet,
we might have to, but
it depends on my business. OK.
Business is going well
at the moment, is it?
Yes, it's going great. At the moment.
That's a rare thing in a recession.
It is. Yes.
It's not all destruction, though,
work has also uncovered hidden gems.
Look, there's a bit of green here.
Look. Wow.
Architectural echoes
from the cinema's heyday.
Look at that.
There's a zigzag in it. Oh, that's
beautiful. It's all right, isn't it?
And then there
are two shades of green.
It's unbelievable, isn't it?
It's quite wonderful.
We were going to have
polished concrete on the floor.
You've got polished concrete,
that's exactly what this is.
This is polished concrete with
aggregate in it
which has been cut back, polished,
it's just done with infinite care
and patience and coloured pigment.
It's really nice, isn't it?
It is nice.
By the time it's polished up
and shiny, imagine glossy,
it will be like marble, it would
look really quite something else.
This fine building holds precious
memories for the people of Thorne.
This project could be
more than just a home,
it has the potential to become
a symbolic restoration
of pride in the town.
However,
with every bite of that machine,
another little nugget
of history disappears.
And boy, with a machine like that,
is it easy
to take just that
little bite too much.
It's two months since work started
at the former cinema in Thorne.
The demolition monsters have moved
on and sand blasters have
taken their place,
removing crusty paint
and mould from the decaying
cinema's bricks.
Whenever Gwyn's not busy running his
educational software business,
he's lending a hand on site.
It's absolutely fantastic
I can't keep my eyes off it.
It's like...backwards painting,
it's like they're painting bricks
back onto my house.
However, Gwyn and Kate are not going
to be living in a house of bricks
but one of concrete.
It's a building material that
divides opinion.
This is the National Theatre
in London, on the South Bank,
designed by Denys Lasdun
in the 1960s.
He was one of Britain's great
architects
and it's a series of brutalist
blocks and planes and platforms.
When it was first built,
the Prince of Wales said it
looked like a nuclear power station.
Sir John Betjeman, the poet
and conservationist, he loved it.
And that controversy
persists until this day.
And look, it is made entirely,
inside and out,
from board-marked concrete.
I mean, this is
Gwyn and Kate's living room.
You see, I think that Gwyn
and Kate are remarkably brave.
Concrete is normally associated with
car parks rather than craftsmanship
and yet when you juxtapose
it with carpets,
upholstery and lighting, it takes
on an entirely different quality,
a much more luxurious character.
Their concrete seems acceptable
in a large public building in London
but it is radical
for a home in Thorne.
Gwyn and Kate have
so far been faithfully
following the architectural
vision of their friend
Jeremy Southgate.
So, not before time,
they're going to visit a house
that has plenty of exposed
board-marked concrete inside.
It's quite nerve-racking
cos I'm not sure what will happen
if I don't like it!
Well, you know...
Back to the drawing board.
Yeah.
This house was also designed by
Gwyn's school friend Jeremy
who's something of
a concrete evangelist.
One of the new ideas that we
introduced to them was using
concrete as a domestic material.
For us, it was partly
because the existing building,
bits of it were in concrete and
we really wanted to build on that,
and also because
we just loved concrete.
I think concrete in this country
does definitely have a bad
reputation
but it's time to reclaim it.
I'm just taking it all in.
I'm thinking of possibly putting
in a skylight, something like this,
where we get this nice
flood of light straight down
and it really highlights
the texture of the concrete wall.
Concrete's eco-credentials have
taken a bashing, not least from me,
but it remains immensely durable
and capable of different identities.
So this is board-marked concrete
and you can see, literally, it is
the marks of the boards that we
use to make the formwork.
It's sort of like pouring
jelly into a mould.
If you said you had a big concrete
plinth in the middle of your
house, you'd say "Don't be daft",
but this looks just normal,
doesn't it?
Gwyn seems sold but Kate has been
uncertain about their concrete
from the start.
That's better than
I imagined it would look and
I can see that fitting in our house.
It's really nice to see it in a home
and see that it does work but,
you know, I think it can work for us
as well so it's been really useful.
They've been at work on site for
five months now and a cleaned
facade has begun to yield
some of its architectural secrets.
It's looking very different,
isn't it? What do you think?
It cleaned up really, really well
in the end. Yes.
Is this stone?
No. It was difficult to see before.
Is it concrete? It's concrete.
It's all concrete.
It's not too bad, is it?
On the whole,
it looks pretty sharp, yes.
I knew it was going to be nice
but I didn't think it would be
this beautiful.
Now it has a real palatial
quality about it.
Now, where is my terrazzo floor
that I so lovingly discovered,
polished and swept?!
Um...
It got dug out on my orders!
It wasn't me, it wasn't me.
It was me!
I...
I'm slightly gobsmacked, Kate,
because it was beautiful.
I spent days chipping
round the corners,
trying to work out how we could
keep it all. You did, didn't you?
There were loads of reasons
to be honest.
One, you didn't like it...
It reminded me
of my school toilet floors!
SHE LAUGHS
It was the ?6,000 restoration bill
and it's just a massive heat sink.
'My beautiful 1920s terrazzo floor
has been lost and replaced with vast
'amounts of modern concrete and
there's plenty more of it to come.'
'Gwyn and Kate's builder Richard
Wilson is also a long-time friend.
'Today he's taking
delivery of the heavy moulds or
'formwork into which they'll pour
their board-marked concrete walls.'
It's beefy stuff, this,
isn't it? Yes.
'There's a great deal of preparation
as these walls, once poured,
'will not only be structural
but also have their final finish.'
You're asking Richard to build
your wall, plaster it, paint it,
wallpaper, you know. In one.
In one!
With no mistakes.
With no mistakes.
You can't...
You can't cock it up. No.
If you don't like it, you'll have to
wallpaper it! Yes!
'Setting the moulds precisely
and filling them
'with concrete can take up
to five days
'so they'll have to wait to see if
their board-mark effect works.'
What's interesting is that
although the facade is all about
the street,
the way you've organised the
building is all about the garden.
It's going to be splendid.
All accessible through this
Thunderbird II hatch.
The Gwindow! The Gwindow!
What, does that fit in between
these...?
Yes, all in between here, yeah,
and it will hydraulically move up.
Bonkers!
Bonkers.
'Gwyn's idea for the window
sounds mad
'but it could work in providing
that connection to Kate's garden.
'She's being painstakingly
reclaiming bricks
from the rubble for her walls.'
How was that?
It was cold, it was hard work,
but it was...
Yeah, it was enjoyable.
So, are you finding yourself more
and more fired up,
more empowered, really,
to make decisions? Yes, definitely.
I think, at the beginning, it did
seem that it was Gwyn, Jem, Rich.
It was them who were sort of
posting e-mails to each other,
and I sort of distanced myself
from it.
It was just a case of, "Just get
it built, I want to live in it,
"that's all I want."
Whereas now I'm enjoying this
whole process of it
and getting involved and stuff,
so that's really good.
Board-marked concrete may have found
its home on London's South Bank
in the 1960s,
but today we can find out
whether it works in traditional
red brick Thorne.
The concrete was poured into moulds
and, having now set, they can
uncover the spanking grey finish
to their living room walls.
Steady, Bill.
Hold it there.
CREAKING
Is it all right? Yes, missed it.
Thank God.
'It's not a good start.
'Luckily, their concrete walls
aren't damaged.'
That's working, isn't it? Yes.
There's loads of texture.
This is what I had in my mind.
This is what I was hoping for.
Yes, this is... It's concrete, Gwyn.
It's pretty cool, isn't it? Yes.
As work progresses, it's becoming
increasingly difficult to hide
the radical ambitions of Gwyn
and Kate's home from curious locals.
Whenever Kate's in the local shops,
she's always hearing that we've
run out of money again!
HE LAUGHS
But she doesn't say anything,
it doesn't really matter.
Some of them think that we're crazy
and we probably are a little bit
crazy but, you know...
Everything that we've done,
we can justify.
He may need to do just that.
Thorne Needs You, a pressure group
to set up to promote regeneration
in the area,
are inspecting a number
of building sites in the town.
Gwyn and Kate's will be one of them.
I got fed up with people saying what
a tip the place was,
what a state all
of the old buildings were in.
A lot of the old buildings in Thorne
have been pulled down
and shouldn't have been.
Gwyn and Kate's project has
become more than just
the building of a home.
They're restoring a local landmark
with all of its associated memories.
In 1949, Jerry was in front of us
in the queue and we got talking
and then he said, "Do you come
often to the cinema?"
So I said, "Oh, yes,
I usually come once a week."
He said "Well, why don't you come
with me next week?"
This is the gallery,
this is where you two first snogged!
THEY LAUGH
I'm so pleased that the whole thing
isn't just being pulled down.
Absolutely, yes.
I've never seen anything like it
before. It's just wonderful.
I think it's fantastic.
It's really, really inspiring,
Really aspirational for a small
town like Thorne.
You know, all over this little
market town of Thorne,
people are beginning now to buy up
buildings and restore them.
Urban regeneration, by the way,
is not something
that is government-led.
Its energy doesn't reside
in quangos
and in initiatives and policies.
It starts with
a declaration of faith in a place.
It starts with somebody opening
a little cafe
or like Gwyn
and Kate, building a house.
It's now July and the whole
family are on-site to witness
the final delivery of more concrete.
Oh, did you see that?
Where is it?
It's gone right up through
the pump there.
It's taken, like, three or
four months to do it
but the whole structural part
of the building will be finished
and I'm really, really excited today.
By the end of today, they'll have
poured over 400 tonnes of concrete.
I think the lads are a bit
sick of the sight of concrete.
Yes, we like it. Love it.
Don't stand there too long, Rich!
THEY LAUGH
Following the final pour,
the brutal yet sharp concrete
form of Gwyn and Kate's challenging
building is clearly visible.
Work is moving on apace.
No, thanks to a new member of the
building team.
Gwyn's off for the summer
and on-site as a labourer.
Are you trying to save...
You know, cut corners?
Not really, no.
The logical thing for me to do is to
work and then pay someone.
I suppose also there's that thing
about wanting to be involved?
Exactly.
I know every part of this house.
I've knocked the plaster
off most of it!
How is the money?
It's fine now.
Meaning? We applied for a mortgage
which we've got... Yes.
...but it's taken eight months
so luckily we managed
to pay the guys on site,
we had enough to pay
the guys on site.
Line up, will you,
as you go along. Sorry, mate!
So, where does that put your budget?
I think it's going to end
up around about the 400 mark.
'That's 50,000 more than
they intended to spend.
'I'm wondering just how much radical
change, how much concrete,
can Gwyn and Kate stomach?'
We came to a bit of a wall with
all of the concrete stuff.
We got to an amount where we were,
like, "What about putting
"up studwork and it'll be done
quicker and it'll be done cheaper."
And it was the concrete guy,
Sean, who basically told you to
hold your nerve and, you know...
that it's been designed and you're
going to lose what you set out
to achieve and so we stuck with it.
I think we're at the limit
now with concrete!
THEY LAUGH
I have to remind myself that Gwyn
and Kate are going on more than
a personal concrete adventure.
Their product's high-profile
and they've got the whole
town along for a ride.
As their concrete
contractor said to them,
a bit of advice that
I really think applies here,
don't lose your nerve.
At the old cinema in Thorne,
it's a hive of activity.
The insulation
and the studwork are going in
and Ian the joiner is
putting in 24 wooden window frames.
It'll go.
I think that brickwork
needs cleaning off.
Gwyn's solution to waterproofing
the flat roofs and terraces is,
as you'd expect from him, hi tech.
They heat up the two drums
of chemicals,
shoot them into two pipes,
then spray it out and as the
chemicals are sprayed,
it makes a chemical reaction
and forms plastic that'll
last for ages.
At the front of the building,
the recast concrete
lintels are now in place.
And there's one addition
I wasn't expecting.
'Up top, the old projector room's
been rebuilt
'with a roof that sticks out
over the facade.'
Oh, dear.
What on earth is that, eh?
And it was all going so well.
Gwyn...
what's that thing on your roof?
What do you mean "thing on my roof"?
Object. How you doing?
How are you? That object, that lump.
"Lump"?!
That big box...that nun's wimple.
That elegant floating roof,
you mean?
Diving board.
"Diving board"?!
A beautiful Edwardian facade
with that...box.
Yeah, but it'll be rendered white
so it will disappear into the sky.
On a cloudy day.
Cloudy sky, yeah.
OK.
There's nothing wrong with it.
What do you know?
THEY LAUGH
In the end, it's my opinion
versus yours. Yeah?
I can give you a hard time.
And you come back.
It's not like you're insecure
about any of these decisions.
You're strong about them.
I used to be really nervous of how
people would judge it,
maybe how they'd judge me,
especially people in Thorne,
and I think I'm past worrying now.
I wouldn't say it's new
territory for you, but it's...
Completely new territory. It is.
Completely.
What does it look
like from the back, then?
Let's have a look.
Oh! Now we're talking!
It's great, isn't it?
Do you like it?
What's the black spray at the top?
That's the waterproofing
that's just come over.
It looks like a concrete bunker
someone's set fire to.
HE LAUGHS
I think the triumphant elements are
the projection holes.
We had to pull down the actual
original room, but we
kept the holes.
It was originally designed with
loads of little holes
all over that wall. Right.
A bit like, there's a window
that Le Corbusier did...
Oh, yeah, I know the one.
HE LAUGHS
Do you?
Do I(?)
SHE LAUGHS
Imagine if you put more of those in,
that it would ever have
the same quality.
I'll Google it.
I'm not ever going to be taken
seriously again, am I?
'In order to restore my credentials,
'let me tell you about Le Corbusier,
'perhaps the father of modernism,
'who built extensively in concrete.
'The chapel at Ronchamp in France,
'completed in 1955,
'is almost entirely
formed from the stuff,
'perforated with seemingly random,
'deep-set, small windows,
'so it's not incidental that
the projector room
'windows remind me of Ronchamp.'
What's upstairs on the top floor?
I've never been up.
All the studwork's done up here.
You're ready for your first fix
- your wiring and everything?
Yeah, we just need
to get it watertight.
What will this be, Gwyn?
The projector room where the
original projector was,
so it will be the cinema room.
HE LAUGHS
I normally groan
when people say "cinema room",
but of all places, of all houses,
you've got to have one, haven't you?
Yeah. Fantastic.
'Our modernist-inspired
concrete home
'with a cinema room is all
very exciting,
'especially for Thorne.
'So it's no surprise that
the emerging building
'continues to be a talking point.'
This is about the town as much
as it's about you, isn't it?
People now are noticing
and talking about it, aren't they?
Yeah, to our faces,
really positively.
I've been told the local
community group here
consider this building to be
rather important.
And that you are something
of a poster boy.
HE LAUGHS
I don't think so.
That's for others to judge.
We'd rather make where we are better
than move somewhere else.
Freezing conditions in January
have brought work on site to
a virtual standstill.
Only Ian the joiner is
toughing it out.
We're waiting for the render,
basically.
It's stopping all the other
jobs from happening.
We have to put the render on
before we put all the...
balustrade on, the cladding on,
and before we get it all
weather-tight,
so it's stopping everything, really.
This break has allowed them
time to think
just how far they've come.
We knew nothing about architecture,
nothing about modernism.
We're really pushing our boundaries
of what we know in terms of
taste, you know.
Kate uses these two words, she says,
"I want it to be traditional.
"It's a bit too modern."
I'm like, "What's modern
and what's traditional?"
But I know what she means -
she wants things to feel homely.
Concrete wall, OK.
Picture of us, brilliant.
Homely.
As progress slows on site,
Gwyn's taking Kate and builder Rich
to a factory in Preston
to see how his pet project,
the hydraulic hanger door,
or "Gwyndow" is coming on.
The factory usually build
aircraft hanger doors
and their products have never been
used on a house before.
What do you reckon to that, Kate?
This is the smallest door
they've ever made.
Unfortunately, it's too small.
Those feet will need extending
to fit into the concrete
that's there now.
That angle's all going to
want altering.
So that angle's not right.
Due to a communications breakdown,
the factory have been given
the wrong dimensions,
so they've made the frame
to the wrong specifications.
The joiners here have pointed out
it's not just the size, there are
other flaws in Gwyn's idea.
There's a few problems with it.
It's not thermally broken,
so it means
that we'll get condensation
on the inside.
I just went along with it,
thinking, "Well,
"when it's shut, it'll work,"
but then you start realising it's
all the edges, you can
have draughts, and now it just
seems like a lot of hard work.
HE SIGHS
Kate's not very
happy about the situation.
She just wants to give it up
as a bad job.
I will put my foot
down at the end of the day -
if I have to, I will.
Cos I've got to live in it.
..The two things.
What's that?
I'm just saying we need to separate
the business of money
and us getting a door.
But the problem is,
at the beginning you convinced me
to have this door in the first
place, didn't you? Yes.
And now it's all falling apart,
so I'm a bit like,
"Why have it?"
It's not the door's falling apart.
The door's not made,
it can't fall apart.
We can solve the problems, Kate.
Gwyn is the problem, though!
SHE LAUGHS
HE SIGHS
The Gwyndow situation is unresolved,
but there is some good news.
The render is at last on
and the house is being clad in pine.
Softwood isn't normally
used for cladding,
but this is special.
It's called ThermoWood.
It's actually
pine that's been baked
this past 20 years
but it's cheaper than larch.
It weathers really dark,
like a black-brown colour,
which we really like.
We went to see
the Discovery Centre in Cleethorpes
and saw it there
and it looked absolutely beautiful.
If you just look up there,
there's the cladding and render
and the concrete together -
it looks absolutely beautiful.
In fact,
I always thought it was
like a bold house,
but it's really pretty.
I didn't know it would look
as nice as that.
It's beautiful, it's a picture.
Now watertight, they're starting
work on the interiors
but face a new dilemma.
How do you furnish a concrete home?
Jeremy Southgate,
who designed the house,
is back to inspect the work
and to see how Gwyn and Kate will
rise to this design challenge.
Gwyn and Kate have been fantastic at
getting into the spirit of what
the house was designed to do.
There is a certain way that
the weight of the architecture
does almost dictate
the way you live in the space.
The other stuff you need to
get in for moving in
is the lights and stuff like that.
I find that really difficult -
lighting.
I don't think I've ever bought
a decent light in my life.
We just went to B&Q
and bought a ?20 lampshade.
HE LAUGHS
That's what we used to do.
Going to get the new,
L-shaped sofa in there,
and then bring our table
from our house
in for the dining room, here.
When it comes to the interior,
Gwyn and Kate seem rather lost.
They'll have to find their way and
take some cues from the building.
It's not my place
to impose something on them
that I think
is the correct thing.
At the end of the day,
they're living here, not me.
Cos we couldn't get
the pool table in,
we're going to put
a mirror ball up there.
HE LAUGHS
Last time I visited
the former cinema
in the heart of redbrick Thorne,
Gwyn and Kate hadn't a clue how
to furnish their concrete home
and their landmark house was still
shrouded in scaffolding.
Wow.
Wow!
Now the Edwardian cinema front
is beautifully restored
in every detail,
topped off with that rendered white
plinth jutting out over the facade.
The nun's wimple is still there,
though, isn't it?
They must be showing
The Sound Of Music this week.
It's an addition which suggests
there is more beyond the brick.
Hello! Hi! How are you?
Fine, thank you.
You all right? You're both very
summery and relaxed.
In sandals and stuff.
Where are the site boots? And hard
hats? They've gone now. Yeah.
Hey, diving board! Look at it.
It's lovely, isn't it?
That's a 30 metre, that one.
Anyway, do you want to come in?
Right.
Gwyn and Kate seem quite
the masters of their home,
completely at ease
with its double character
and assertive that what they've
done here is good.
Well, now...
You see, I thought you were going to
put down a polished concrete floor,
just the usual bog-standard
grey thing.
Right, yeah.
I've been working myself into a bit
of a lather about
that terrazzo, you know,
disappearing.
But this is really good, isn't it?
This is so rarely done.
People often polish their concrete.
This involves grinding
right into the surface
and then polishing it up slowly.
It is completely smooth
and polished. Yeah, yeah.
You can see the reflection...
I know.
Look, across there,
like a piece of marble.
It's different to this, which is...
This approach is basically leave
what you find there. Yeah.
Complete with shrapnel marks.
Yeah. That's great.
And it's on the other side as well.
Look. I like that.
I like that a lot.
This is proving worth
the admission fee.
As in a cinema, these spaces are
generous, theatrical.
A flawless white kitchen overlooks
an uber-fashionable mix of
old and new,
rough and smooth...wood...
..and concrete.
I tell you what, this
is monumental, Gwyn.
GWYN LAUGHS
And in true theatrical style,
there has to be a show,
provided here not by bifold doors,
but the Gwyndow.
We did it. This is
a piece of engineering!
HE LAUGHS
I do like the sculptures either
side. That's very avant-garde. Yeah.
I can't believe you've not pressed
the button yet. I daren't!
I don't know what do.
That one, dude, there.
This one? Yeah. Press it!
Press it!
There you go. Amazing.
Where's the theme music?
GWYN LAUGHS
KEVIN MIMICS THEME MUSIC
Takes a while. Yeah, yeah.
You put your finger on the button
and we'll come back later.
I want to go and look at this
wall over here. Come on.
Are you pleased with this? Yeah.
Kate's opinion of concrete
has of course changed.
Like the appearance
of the material itself.
I think of this not
exactly as frozen velvet,
but it's got a kind of...
It looks soft. Yeah.
It looks softer than what it is.
I can't resist touching it. And that
has to be a good thing, doesn't?
An attractive quality, you know.
Rather than just a block of
concrete, it's more than that now.
This reminds me of the somewhat
lavish board-marked concrete
I saw at the National Theatre
because of the same way
it's set against much more
luxurious, softer materials.
It's actually assumed a
luxurious quality itself.
Is it up? It's nearly there!
There you go, look. Oh, my good lord.
You've got to be impressed by that,
Kevin, come on.
You're a man, come on.
I'll tell you when I'm impressed!
I'll tell you when I'm impressed!
I'm impressed now.
Now that it's horizontal,
it's suddenly become a roof. Yeah.
What a brilliant thing.
Against all the odds, Gwyn, Richard
and the joiners together made this
hydraulic wonder work.
No, we're really happy with it.
I mean, it was a lot of stress.
Something like this requires that
bit of extra effort. Yes.
Especially when I'm there going,
"No, don't do it!" What does it
look like from the back?
How does the projector room look?
Your bit of Corbusier?
THEY LAUGH
It's all right, isn't it? It's such
a building of two halves, this.
They've restored the historic
front,
but out back it's all Hollywood
Hills, heralding a new architectural
age for Thorne, complete with some
Hollywood bling.
This is our hydro pool. It's amazing.
Oh, I prefer my pool with a few more
jets!
THEY LAUGH
And controls.
It looks like you've got
a bit of a space shuttle
and filled it with water.
It is. No, it's great
and the kids absolutely love it.
Well, I hope it makes you very
happy. Thank you!
From the start,
Gwyn and Kate expressed
a lack of confidence in their taste,
but no longer.
This place is sophisticated.
This is a beautiful white kitchen.
There's a sort of luxuriousness
in this building, you know.
The chrome, the white kitchen, the
polished floor. There's a kind of...
Against the kind of roughness
of the concrete.
'Mercifully, not all
of the old cinema was demolished.
'Its historic concrete beams are
still out on show.'
They look like...
honed limestone.
Oh, you did it! More concrete. Yeah.
So where the old stuff leaves off,
the new stuff takes over. Yeah.
That's right, yeah.
A concrete shower! Yeah.
A concrete shower. Yes.
THEY LAUGH
Yeah, he did it.
YORKSHIRE ACCENT: Drink Yorkshire
tea and take a concrete shower!
THEY LAUGH
Oh...
I think it's a beautiful thing, made
more beautiful by the skylight.
Raising the wall with that
top light.
Private breakfast deck.
'This used to
be the gallery of the cinema.
'It's now a great vantage point to
watch the boys making
'the most of their new garden.'
I don't normally say this, but I
would like to see your cinema room.
It's up there.
Beckoning.
At the very top of the building is
the room where the cinema's
projector once stood.
With those two big
windows at the front
and these little ones at the back...
Yeah. It's a light room, isn't it?
The roofscape of Thorne is
actually rather wonderful,
with all these old red chimney
pots and the old brewery. Yeah.
The building is encapsulated here,
isn't it? Mm.
The old at the front
and the new at the back,
but at the same time,
the history of the place.
'46 years after the curtain fell
on the Kensington Palace Cinema,
'the building once again has
a projector room which,
'alongside so many things here,
can continue to entertain.
'Gwyn's ended up with an entry level
James Bond villain's lair,
'so I'm interested to know
how far they've strayed
'from the constraints
of their original ?350,000 budget.'
How much did it really, really cost?
It cost us 450. For everything.
Does that include the cost of the
site? Yeah, yeah. Everything? Yeah.
Well, that's good!
I mean, I can see money like that
disappearing into a project
like the window.
You've got quite a conspicuous
building all of a sudden
which, you know, is a landmark.
People appreciate the fact that,
you know,
we've been brave
and that we've done it here.
I love the old bit, you know,
that means so much,
that we've done that in Thorne,
in our home town.
We've made it look good again.
As a project, as a sort of milestone
in your life of achievements,
where does this come?
Oh, you know, at the top.
I mean, I don't know what more a man
can do than provide
a beautiful home for his family.
It's remarkable how at ease these
two are with concrete living.
It doesn't feel weird at all.
Some bits I look at and I go,
wow, because it's so nice and it's
so new-looking,
but it does feel like home.
They've pursued a powerful idea here
and they've saved
a much-loved landmark.
Do you think there's a bit
of the cinema soul still here?
I think so.
It's had a happy feeling
since the day we unscrewed that
board on the front and walked
in and it was full of pigeon poo
and everything, and there wasn't a
bad feeling in here, was there? No.
Not at all. That's the point about a
cinema,
it's a picture house, it's a
place... It's to entertain. Yeah.
What lovely traits to
inherit in a building.
What a great premise for future
happiness.
And of course there's one
other thing.
Do you know, I never cease to be
amazed by the power
of buildings to effect change,
to change us, to change
who we are, to change a place,
to change even the fortunes
of a place.
Hell, we can regenerate
towns like this all over Britain
one cinema at a time.
We need more Gwyns and Kates
to go on their own
all-action architectural adventure.