A MUCH-LOVED independent cinema has welcomed a new owner.

And to the relief of the Ultimate Picture Palace’s many dedicated fans, she is not planning to change a thing.

In fact, Becky Hallsmith, of East Oxford, was so keen to keep the 100-year-old cinema, in Jeune Street, exactly as it is, that when she heard the previous owners were putting it up for sale, she immediately emailed them and put in a bid.

Ms Hallsmith, 53, said: “I just love film and love the Ultimate Picture Palace the way it is.

“I love the fact that it is an independent cinema at a time when so much of our world is going in the way of the corporate.

“The front will need a lick of paint at some point but I am not planning to make any big changes.”

The film buff, who lists classic comedies Some Like it Hot and Philadelphia Story as her two favourite films, said she is hoping to add more movies to the programming.

Ms Hallsmith, whose step-father Harvey Hall was a minor actor in Hammer Horror films, said she is looking forward to perhaps one day being able to watch him on the screen of her own cinema.

She said: “It was just going to be a little secret pleasure to be able to watch him in my cinema.”

Previous owners Philippa Farrow and Jane Derricott decided to sell up because they said running the East Oxford cinema had left them exhausted.

The friends, who bought the cinema in 2009 and have run it with the help of a team of volunteers, said it deserved someone with more time and energy.

Ms Farrow said: “All we would like to do is wish Becky the very best. It is a lovely, lovely small business.”

The Oxford Picture Palace, as it was originally known, opened on February 24, 1911, and earlier this year celebrated its centenary.

It became a furniture store in the 1920s but was turned back into a cinema in 1976 by BBC Oxford radio presenter Bill Heine.

He named it the Penultimate Picture Palace after a conversation with his bank manager, who informed him his plan was ‘not quite the ultimate in bad ideas, but the penultimate’.

Squatters inhabited the building after the cinema closed in 1994, but it reopened as the Ultimate Picture Palace in 1997.

Ms Hall added: “Philippa and Jane have done an absolutely marvellous job with the cinema and I just hope to carry that work on.”