BIRT PRESTED loved the movies. Not just the swish of the curtains, the rustle of sweet papers and the ubiquitous Pearl and Dean advert break, he loved the technical challenges film-making presented.

His passion began in unusual circumstances. Serving with the British Army in Berlin after the Second World War, he met a Luftwaffe pilot who used to take aerial photographs. The pair struck up a friendship and an obsession was born.

Friends say it was one film in particular that the pilot had made, of the four seasons, that led to Birt's lifelong fascination with film.

As well as building up a remarkable collection of cameras, one of the largest in private hands, he also converted his loft into a cinema.

Sadly, Birt died on December 7 last year, aged 80 and his widow, June, decided to put the 400-strong collection up for auction by Tennants, of Leyburn, North Yorkshire. The cameras sold for £10,185 when they went under the hammer on Saturday. The most expensive was a rare Leica 3C which was snapped up for £680. The lots dated from 1900 to the 1980s.

But the five-seater cinema, complete with authentic carpet, five high-backed reclining seats and projectors, will remain in the loft of Mrs Prested's two-bedroomed terraced home in Durham City.

She said: "Everywhere he went, he was looking for more cameras and projectors. The attic cinema was full of projectors, 25 or more, and films of course.

"The cinema was for family or himself or anyone who was interested. He loved it when he had an audience."

It is not the first cinema in the Lawson Terrace home, which belonged to Mr Prested's father before him. When he was a boy, he would set up his projector in the coal-shed at the back of the house and charge his friends a ha'penny to watch films.

Then, several decades later, he knocked a hole in the sitting room wall big enough to hold a projector and beamed films on to the front room curtains. It was in the 1980s that he began collecting cameras and projectors.

Mrs Prested said: "He had to build cupboards to put it all in. There are two whole cupboards in the bedroom, one over the stairs and then he converted the attic."

As well as repairing antique cameras and taking photographs, her husband's skills as a builder, installer and repairer of church organs were notable.

The fourth generation of organ-makers in his family, he eventually took over the family business, making organs in a converted Methodist chapel in Bearpark, near Durham.

The Prested name can be seen on organs throughout the country, but some of his most important assignments included building and installing the organ at the concert hall in Gothenburg, Sweden, and the rebuilding of the organ at the Royal Festival Hall