ok I worked out how to fix this. For those wanting to do the same thing follow the steps below:
1. In the administrator back end go to Menu > mainmenu (This is located in the toolbar bit at the top). Alternatively go to menu manager and then mainmenu (click on that small icon to edit the items in the main menu).
2. Click on ‘Home’ from the list, or if you changed the item name then whatever it is…
3. Then on the right hand side of the page you will see the parameters box. Look down until you see the word columns. My default value was set to 2. I deleted that and entered 0. Now publish more than 2 content items on the front page and they should all be after one another. Rather than in columns.
I hope that helped someone.