Former Courtroom Serves as Temporary Cinema for New Paddington Film

The third installment of the Paddington film series premiered in cinemas throughout the UK on Friday. However, one particular venue encountered unusual difficulties in its preparations to screen the movie. Last month, the roof of the Abbey Cinema in Abingdon was found to contain reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) and asbestos. Consequently, the venue was compelled to halt all screenings while awaiting a comprehensive investigation and necessary remedial actions. Subsequent to the identification of these structural issues, the cinema established a provisional auditorium within the town’s former magistrates’ court, completing it just prior to the debut of Paddington in Peru. Manager Sue Wiper characterized the detection of the hazardous substances as a “total disaster”. “I’m feeling really sad because we had a beautiful cinema with loads of people coming in and a lot of fun, loads of community events running, and now we don’t,” she stated. Abingdon Town Council, the proprietor of the building, had scheduled its closure in September 2025 for extensive refurbishment. It was during the preliminary scoping work preceding this project that the previously undetected presence of RAAC and asbestos came to light. RAAC is a type of economical, lightweight concrete characterized by an approximate 30-year lifespan and a vulnerability to structural compromise. With assistance from the town council, the cinema screen was relocated through several corridors to an older section of the town’s Guildhall, which previously served as its magistrates’ court. “One of the reasons we panicked a bit was that when all this stuff happened with the main auditorium, we thought ‘oh no we’re just coming up to a great season’,” Ms Wiper commented. “We thought ‘what a disaster’, but actually it’s not a disaster because we’re going to have a lovely time here [in the former magistrates’ courtroom],” she added. “What we’ve done is we’ve managed to create the most beautiful space without interfering with the historic fabric of the building,” she concluded.