Kiosk coffee shop and cocktail bar, Manchester
It’s become a pram and dog walkers’ drive-through’
As bricks-and-mortar coffee and cocktail stops go, a 4 sq metre (43 sq ft) cupboard conversion between a post office and a wine bar is an ingenious use of space. Kiosk’s bubblegum-pink front, in the Didsbury area of Manchester, serves as a hatch into a 1 metre x 3 metre (39in x 118in) space that was originally set to house the stairs to owner Jemma O’Brien’s first-floor flat.
“It’s become a pram drive-through and dog walkers’ drive-through,” says O’Brien, 33, of the business she dreamed up during a lockdown spent “alone, on my arse and on universal credit”. Now the microspot, in a suburban Victorian shopping arcade, is beloved for its charm and some of the city’s best independent coffee and pastries.
“Loads of locals helped me put it together,” O’Brien says. “A dad who used to be an aeroplane engineer, his wife who’s a town planner, and a friend who’s an architect. People think it’s just Instagrammable, then they look closer and see it’s actually an engineering work of art with brilliant coffee.”
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Platform 3 pub, Esher, Surrey
You have to be ruthless about space’
There’s really only space for one punter inside this micropub at Claygate station in the commuter town of Esher, which has a 30cm x 38cm (12in x 18in) bar and makes fine use of a former coal ordering office. Landlord Alex Coomes (pictured) opened it in 2015 as a kerb-side pickup for the Brightwater ales brewed in his garage down the road, but the space quickly turned into a tightly packed brewery tap, with the odd guest beer.
Drinking takes place almost exclusively outside the pub, and with glasses banned by the council, the 55 regulars have pewter tankards (labelled with their names) hanging on hooks inside. Others sip their ales from compostable cups or take them home in milk cartons. The food menu extends to local sausage rolls, baked in a small, shelf-top oven. “You have to be organised and ruthless about the space you allocate,” says Coomes, 56. “You can only carry so much stock.”
The pub, on the Guildford line into Waterloo, is open from March until Christmas, with a gazebo for dreary days. “We get a lot of commuter traffic. There’s one group that comes up from Cobham every Friday, to go to a nearby curry house, and stops here for a drink. It’s a great community pub, too. Customers have become good friends and older people use it as somewhere to meet,” Coomes says. “One chap sits with his little boy who is obsessed with trains, and recently a train driver who does our line stopped by for a pint.”
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Milburn primary school, Penrith, Cumbria
It’s pretty much all the children in the village’
There are 13 children – including three sets of siblings – on the register at Milburn primary school, which still occupies its original 1851 building on the edge of the North Pennines. “It’s pretty much all the children in the village, and some who travel from outside,” says Hayley Dixon, 36, the school’s only full-time teacher (there are also three part-time staffers). “I know them inside out. There’s an added closeness to families, and the community, which is mostly elderly, is incredibly supportive. The children planted winter bulbs in one lady’s garden and she bought them each a book for Christmas last year.”
The village green serves as a playground, sports day includes the locals and climbing and horse riding are on the curriculum. “Being so small gives me space to think about different ways to teach and motivate the children,” Dixon says. “My last school had 220 pupils,” Dixon says. “People think because I’ve only got 13, it must be easy. Not always! I’m all the subject leaders, the PE teacher, and I take in deliveries – but I love it.”
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Colosseum cinema, Bournemouth
Each room is the size of someone’s lounge’
In an abandoned shoe shop inside a Victorian arcade, Paul Whitehouse (pictured) has created a cinema whose screening rooms – “Each about the size of someone’s lounge” – hold eight, 10 and 15 guests respectively.
“The multiplexes that replaced old town centre cinemas are hard to reach for a lot of people,” says Whitehouse, 60. He converted the space eight years ago, setting up top-end projector screens in two rooms and a 100in Sony TV in the third, and added leather sofas, as well as chairs picked up from a Stringfellows nightclub. The rooms are often full, thanks to weekend schedules of classic, cult, current and foreign films, plus private hire options. There’s a bar, Saturday morning kids’ films, live sporting events and themed supper clubs that match cuisine with film.
“It’s comfortable, cosy and quirky. We’ve hired it out for everything from a romantic screening for two to a wake.”
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10 Lower Gate Street, Conwy
Children see it as a real-life wendy house, although they often ask where the TV is’
The smallest house in Britain, now a charming tourist attraction where the only bedroom can barely fit a double mattress, was bequeathed to its current owner, Jan Tyley, in 2015 by her aunt. The north Wales house has been passed down through the family since 1891, when Tyley’s great-great-grandfather, Robert Jones, bought it as a tenanted let. It remained occupied until 1900, when the local council deemed it too small to live in. Jones had the foresight to save it from council demolition after discovering, through local advertisements, that its 1.8 metre x 3.4 metre (6ft x 11ft) footprint made it the country’s smallest dwelling and therefore worth keeping.
“I worked summers there, selling tickets as a teenager,” says Tyley, 56, a wills and probate solicitor. She closes the property during the winter and works on the door during warmer months (alongside tour guides including Gillian Boocock, pictured) when the house attracts about 50,000 visitors a year. “Six or seven people is as many as you can fit inside and that’s a tight squeeze.”
The 3 metre-tall (10ft) house contains a single bed, a wooden settle, a table, a water tap and a stepladder to the bedroom, but no toilet. “Children see it as a real-life wendy house, although they often ask where the TV is,” Tyley says. “People are hungry for its history. I love hearing their enthusiasm.”
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The Church of the Good Shepherd, Lullington, East Sussex
The size of the building doesn’t deter people’
With space for 20 congregants, services at this minute house of prayer spill out into the green Cuckmere valley, with sweeping views across the South Downs. “It’s stunningly beautiful,” says the Rev Stephen Stuckes (pictured), who is responsible for five churches including this one, which holds its first service of the year at sunrise on Easter Day and opens for harvest and a lantern gathering at advent.
The church, which is the remains of a chancel, dates to 1180; the nave was destroyed by fire five centuries ago. Nestled in a sheep-farming area, it hosts seasonal Sunday services that usually conclude with tea at a nearby farm. Weddings are held here, too – a recent addition.
“It’s on a pilgrimage route, so we have lots of walkers,” Stuckes says. “In fact, it’s not accessible by car so most come by footpath from the nearest village, Alfriston, one mile away. The size of the building doesn’t deter people from turning up. The tiny community make huge efforts to keep it in good order. It’s a real privilege to be responsible for it.”
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Warley Museum, West Yorkshire
People walk past, then are drawn back’
When the local community association opened up the floor to buying and converting a Warley telephone box in 2016, artists Paul Czainski, 69, and his wife Chris (pictured) suggested turning it into a museum. “Once we’d put our hands up, it was our responsibility,” says Paul, who has turned the back wall into a local history display, made a mosaic floor of broken bits dug up from allotments and etched famous Yorkshire images into its glass panels. Displays change every three months and have included “the world’s smallest art exhibition” – teeny works by 40 artists – and collections of beer bottle tops and fossils.
It’s free to enter and accommodates two at a time, though displays are visible from outside. Upkeep is a cinch as Paul and Chris live across the road. “The charm is people can walk past without realising, then be drawn back for a closer look. We love to see their reactions. It’s only little, but it’s very important.”
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Beauly station, Scottish Highlands
It resembles a large bus shelter’
At 15 metres (49ft) long, Beauly station in the Scottish Highlands is shorter than a single train carriage. The first stop north of Inverness on the rural Far North Railway Line, the station building has been sold off and the transparent structure now in its place “resembles a large bus shelter”, says Anne-Mary Paterson (pictured outside the old waiting room), who lives two miles away and grew up using the station during school holidays; the line was designed by her ancestors.
After closing due to low usage in 1960, it reopened in 2002 following a campaign by Friends of the Far North Line. Pre-pandemic, 50-60,000 passengers passed through each year, though travel on the line, now almost entirely single-track, has dropped again.
“The Friends group once measured each station,” Paterson says. “Beauly comes in just 1cm smaller than Conon Bridge, further along – but by that margin, it’s the smallest.”
