'Shepperton sold to Pinewood for £35m' / 'Covenants put paid to new lease of life for gems of cinema architecture' - two articles from The Guardian, 12 February 2001

Two articles published in The Guardian, 12 February 2001. The first, by Steven Morris, reports the £35m sale of the London film studio Shepperton to Buckinghamshire rival Pinewood, a merger designed to attract more film-makers to the UK. The second report, by Maev Kennedy, focuses on the restrictive covenants governing some cinemas which preclude their continued use as a cinema after being sold which consequently usually leads to conversion to other functions. The ABC cinema in Whiteladies Road, Bristol (pictured) is cited as an example. The article includes statistics of the numbers of sites owned by the various cinema chains, taken from the BFI handbook 2001.