Film · London
The Cinema Museum Has Until December to Buy Chaplin's Workhouse
London's volunteer-run museum of cinema-going is trying to raise £500,000 by December to buy its Kennington building outright.
The Cinema Museum has until December to buy its own roof. Its 'Buy Our Home' appeal, posted on the museum's website on 7 July and hosted on Crowdfunder, aims to raise £500,000 by then and secure the freehold of the Grade II-listed former Lambeth Workhouse in Kennington, the building where a young Charlie Chaplin spent part of his childhood.
The museum has been in that building for more than 25 years. It was founded in the 1980s by Martin Humphries and Ronald Grant, it takes no public funding, and it is run almost entirely by volunteers. The collection covers over 130 years of cinema history — Victorian magic lanterns, vintage projectors, rare posters, usherettes' uniforms, cinema memorabilia — and includes what the museum says is the UK's only archive of cinema architecture.
Founders Ronald Grant and Martin Humphries: 'The Cinema Museum is far more than a collection of artefacts; it is a living archive of our cinema heritage.'
The threat is not new. Developers bought the building in 2018, and a preservation petition gathered more than 70,000 signatures. What is new is a figure and a deadline. At present the museum runs tours on selected days; it says owning the freehold would let it open to the public daily. In a 1 September post, the museum said a video by content creator Harriet Fisher had given its Crowdfunder its best weekend to date, up £25,000 in a couple of days.
It is worth being clear what this place is to Londoners: it has won Time Out's Most Loved Local Culture Spot award, placing above Tate Modern. Co-founder Martin Humphries puts it more simply — 'I've never been to another museum [like it].' Until December, half a million pounds, SE11.