National Trust on Screen E-Book

Harvey Edgington

• Herausgeber: Pitkin
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 185

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

From Mr Darcy diving into the lake at Lyme to Harry Potter exploring the cloisters at Lacock Abbey, National Trust on Screen goes behind the scenes of some of the most iconic film and TV moments.    Ranging from lavish costume dramas such as Poldark and Wolf Hall to epic fantasies including Game of Thrones and The Dark Knight Rises, the historic houses and stunning landscapes of the National Trust have been chosen as backdrops by some of the world's most famous directors.   This fact-filled guidebook is organised geographically enabling the planning of single visits or entire adventure trips.   Films and TV series featured: Poldark, Sense and Sensibility, Wolf Hall, The Other Boleyn Girl, the Harry Potter films, The Duchess, The Crown, Snow White and the Huntsman, Never Let Me Go, Remains of the Day, Miss Potter, The History Boys, Game of Thrones and many many more.

Leseprobe

National Trust

ON SCREEN

Lauren

For my parents, Ian and Christine

Harvey

For Louise, Mathilde and Joe

NOTE ON THE TEXT

Cross references to National Trust filming locations that have entries in this book are given in bold.

These can be looked up in the index. Dates in brackets after film and TV titles refer to the year it was released or screened, not when it was filmed.

Contents

Map of filming locations

Introduction

SOUTH WEST

Cornwall

Botallack; Levant Mine and Beam Engine; Holywell; Gunwalloe: Church Cove; Antony

Devon

Greenway; Saltram

Somerset

Montacute House; Barrington Court; Tyntesfield; Brean Down

Wiltshire

Great Chalfield Manor and Garden; Lacock Abbey; Lacock Village; Stourhead

Gloucestershire

Dyrham Park; Woodchester Park

LONDON AND SOUTH EAST

Oxfordshire

Chastleton House

Berkshire

Basildon Park

Buckinghamshire

Cliveden; Stowe; Claydon

Hertfordshire

Ashridge Estate

Surrey

Frensham Little Pond

West and East Sussex

Petworth; Lamb House

Kent

Chartwell; Knole

Greater London

Osterley Park and House; Ham House and Garden

EAST OF ENGLAND

Cambridgeshire

Wimpole Estate

Suffolk

Lavenham Guildhall; Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds

Norfolk

Felbrigg Hall, Gardens and Estate

MIDLANDS

Warwickshire

Packwood House

Lincolnshire

Belton House

Derbyshire

Hardwick; Kedleston Hall

NORTH WEST

Cheshire

Lyme; Quarry Bank

Cumbria

Yew Tree Farm; Borrowdale and Derwent Water

YORKSHIRE AND NORTH EAST

North Yorkshire

Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden

Northumberland

Cragside

WALES

Pembrokeshire

Freshwater West and Gupton Farm

Vale of Glamorgan

Dyffryn Gardens

Newport

Tredegar House

Powys

Henrhyd Falls

Conwy

Bodnant Garden

NORTHERN IRELAND

County Antrim

Giant’s Causeway

County Down

Castle Ward

County Fermanagh

Florence Court

Index of films and locations

Picture credits and acknowledgements

Map of filming locations

INTRODUCTION

Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens over Borrowdale and Derwent Water in the Lake District.

Can we provide a top-secret military installation for the next Bond film? Do we have a spectacular ballroom for next year’s big costume drama? Have we got an Isaac Newton lookalike who can go on camera? When the phone rings at the National Trust Filming and Locations office, it could be any filming query imaginable.

And so a day here is never dull. We might be deep in the detail of planning a shoot – herding the right sort of toads, or working out how exactly an army of six hundred (with 150 horses) will battle their way across a beach. Our small team manages bookings from the initial query right through to the actual shoot days. We sort out the logistics and negotiate every detail, from whether food and drink can be taken into some of our finest staterooms, to where the trucks are going to park.

Wellington boots and a clipboard are always at hand as we might be out having meetings with National Trust colleagues and the production’s location managers on a cliff, down in a cellar or next to a lake. Each month, an average of nine shoots for TV dramas or films will take place at our properties; sometimes three are happening at once. It just gets busier each year. Occasionally there is a rush on at one location: back in 2009 Robin Hood immediately followed Harry Potter on Pembrokeshire’s Freshwater West beach. They nearly had to wrestle for the dates they wanted.

Since 2003 the Trust has had a dedicated Filming and Locations Office to manage the demand. Filming isn’t new to the Trust though: in the 1950s we hosted Cary Grant at Osterley Park in The Grass is Greener; the 1960s saw a Carry On film, Don’t Lose Your Head, at Cliveden, and Harrison Ford popped by Stowe for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in the 1980s.

Occasionally the queries can be a little bizarre. Personal favourites include: What day will the lambs be born? Do we have a hill they can roll a big cheese down? Can we suspend a hot-air balloon between two huge cranes? Do we have a field in which they can burn a pile of plastic cows? Have we got any antique wooden legs? And do we have anything that looks like South American government buildings? Sometimes we can say yes: a big cheese did indeed roll down a National Trust hill and, as it happens, we do have a wooden leg. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to predict the day the lambs would put in an appearance.

We have managed to make lots of outlandish-sounding requests work: an entire village was constructed over Frensham Pond for Snow White and the Huntsman and then was burnt down ten times a night, over two nights; the entrance to Christopher Nolan’s bat cave in The Dark Knight Rises was built in the corner of Osterley’s Library, and we managed to protect Claydon during Far From the Madding Crowd when 75 supporting artists and four huge Christmas trees arrived for a ball.

So why facilitate filming if it’s not straightforward? The main reasons are that successful productions often lead to a rise in visitors and in addition to this, being in a film or TV series generates much-needed income for the location, which can be used for conservation work. Great Chalfield Manor re-roofed its stables thanks to The Other Boleyn Girl; after Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Antony in Cornwall saw its visitor numbers quadruple. Hosting a film can also boost the local economy, as cast and crew need to be accommodated, transported and catered for.

In this book we’ve gathered all of our most memorable on-screen moments together for the first time. Over the years we’ve hosted an extraordinary range of productions: we’ve been Winterfell in Game of Thrones; Poldark has picked up shipwrecked goods on one of our beaches; Alice has disappeared down a rabbit hole in our garden and a certain Mr Darcy has taken a dip in one of our lakes – surely costume drama’s most iconic moment. Our places have sometimes briefly become far-flung spots around the globe, and beyond: North Korea, California – even a galaxy far, far away in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens.

Fountains Abbey, Chartwell and Petworth have all ‘played themselves’, which was less of a stretch for them, but it’s not just houses and the countryside that get a look-in: two mines, a mill, a theatre, an entire village and a holiday cottage have all lent their looks to some high-profile film productions and appear in this book.

We’ll reveal which actors have become National Trust regulars, (we’re looking at you Judi Dench, Aidan Turner and Keira Knightley); why the sites were chosen, and how we manage the complicated challenges that filming in historic places can present. Whether it’s a beach, woodland or a house, we have to ensure the film-makers can achieve the shots they need in locations that must be left as they were found.

It’s been a trip down memory lane for us and some surprisingly quirky facts emerged. We’d never thought about what Jonathan Pryce, John Nettles and Johnny Depp have in common: we now know they’ve all played characters who have died in bedrooms in our houses. Which is unfortunate as we’re usually trying to make the room come alive. Donald Sutherland has had two filming stints with us, 38 years apart: in 1967 he was one of The Dirty Dozen who stopped by the Ashridge Estate and in 2005 he played Mr Bennet at Basildon Park for Pride and Prejudice. We’ve also realised the Trust must be the owner of the country’s most star-struck hut; it’s on the Ashridge Estate and is a very well-used location.

The hardest part of producing this book, apart from gluing the pages together, has been selecting which productions to feature. We couldn’t put them all in unless we gave away a bookcase with every copy. It was a long debate and in true Hollywood style we now only converse with each other via lawyers. In the end we have selected those that we know there is great interest in (we get the emails), the biggest box office hits, the mightiest action films, and the most compelling and well-loved costume dramas. We have also included a few of our personal favourites.

Inevitably some titles had to be left out. The Trust has hosted popular TV programmes like Doc Martin, Broadchurch and Victoria but a location’s appearances have been too brief to warrant mention. Nor does this book cover the numerous documentaries we host on a weekly basis. We haven’t covered pre-1990s productions in any depth as the Trust’s records of twenty years ago are sketchy.

Filming is very much a team effort and collaboration across the Trust often starts months in advance. With contracts exchanged, and all parties fully briefed, the property staff are braced for the arrival of the film crew. The best bit comes much later – sometimes a year or more – in the cinema or on the sofa at home, when we finally see one of ‘our’ properties appear on screen and can annoy our family by pointing them out.

We take this opportunity to say thank you to all of our colleagues at the National Trust places who work with us and the film crews before and during the shoots. Also to the project conservators and our own in-house conservation filming specialist, all of whom are expert in the supervision of historic location filming and who ensure that our buildings and landscapes are safeguarded. We couldn’t function without their knowledge and guidance.

We hope this book becomes a companion on your visits to our houses and landscapes; nowadays you can even download the film and take it with you to stand on the exact spot where the director placed the camera. As good as our places look on film they are even better in real life. You might just bump into one of Hollywood’s finest.

We hope you enjoy the book and, as they say, there is always room for a sequel. Happy location hunting!

Harvey and Lauren

Steadicam filming in the grounds of Florence Court in County Fermanagh for The Woman in White.

CORNWALL

BOTALLACK

ON THE TIN COAST, NEAR ST JUST, CORNWALL

Botallack is part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape UNESCO World Heritage Site. The abandoned mines now serve as a reminder of the area’s once prosperous past when mines stretched out half a mile under the sea bed and produced thousands of tons of copper and tin every year. At one point there were over a hundred engine houses in the St Just area. Botallack has been closed for over a century.

Poldark (2015–2019)

Directed by various; starring Aidan Turner, Eleanor Tomlinson, Kyle Soller, Luke Norris

The buildings at Botallack stood in for various Poldark family mines in all five series of the BBC’s hit adaptation of Winston Graham’s novels. At the beginning of series one Ross Poldark, played by Aidan Turner, returns to Cornwall after fighting in the American War of Independence. It’s a far from rosy homecoming as he finds out that his father is dead, his mines and home are in disarray and his first love Elizabeth is engaged to his cousin. Cornwall’s dramatic coastline, countryside and mines, many of them National Trust-owned, provided awe-inspiring backdrops for the action.

The Wheal Crowns buildings (shown opposite), perched on jagged rocks right next to the sea, were used as Francis Poldark’s failing ‘Wheal Grambler’ in series one. The buildings at Wheal Owles, situated on the headland, played Ross Poldark’s resurrected mine ‘Wheal Leisure’. Wheal Owles provided the setting for both Wheal Leisure and then ‘Wheal Grace’, having been cleverly adapted by the art department to look like different places; it continued as Wheal Grace throughout the remaining series. In the very final episodes, the mine at Wheal Coates near St Agnes, around 35 miles from Botallack, became the derelict Wheal Leisure. Wheal Coates overlooks a rather lovely wide expanse of sand at Chapel Porth beach.

For each series of Poldark, the art department would spend a week or more taking the Botallack mines back the required two hundred years. If there was a National Trust award for the most used location for one TV series, this would surely win. Due to Botallack’s World Heritage status the parameters at all these mines had to be tight: nothing could be attached or fixed to the buildings, so anything added had to be built around or placed on the building. The set-building work included sheds, outbuildings and a scaffold platform inside the mine shaft. This provided a raised floor level so the actors would be able to come and go from the building. Shutters and doors had to be carefully wedged into the lower windows and doorways; when removed they left no trace of ever having been there.

Ross Poldark (Aidan Turner) and Francis Poldark (Kyle Soller) at Wheal Owles.

Filming in such an exposed area has its challenges. During the second series, gale force winds of up to 80mph damaged much of the set and it had to be re-built. Location manager, Poppy Gordon Clark, described the wind as ‘. . .dangerous. We could barely stand up and there was wood from the set flying everywhere. The set had to be stood down and re-built before we could return.’ There was an upside, as Poppy explained, ‘We had to find somewhere to film when it was being re-built so I asked the National Trust if I could take the crew to nearby Porthcurno beach. We went and it made a lovely backdrop for a Ross and Demelza dream sequence.’ Every windy cloud has a silver lining.

Only fairly minimal additions were made to the Wheal Crowns buildings, and the mine works above them were put in later by the visual effects team. On shooting days, it would have been a bustling scene with up to 75 film crew, ten actors and around thirty supporting artists. Anyone passing by had the chance to see how the mines and their surroundings would have looked in their heyday. The mine interiors weren’t filmed here because of safety issues. Instead filming was done in the Poldark Mine nearby or in the Redcliffe caves in Bristol.

The National Trust is sad to report that Ross Poldark’s scything scene did not take place on its land. Admirers were thrilled to see ancient farming methods brought back to life and wondered when Ross would next need to deal with an overgrown meadow. The scene was actually filmed in a cornfield above Porthcothan beach on the north Cornish coast near Padstow.

For more on Poldark, see the entries for Levant Mine and Beam Engine, Holywell, Gunwalloe: Church Cove and Great Chalfield Manor and Garden.

Francis Poldark (Kyle Soller) and the crew at Wheal Owles.

LEVANT MINE AND BEAM ENGINE

ON THE TIN COAST, NEAR PENDEEN, ST JUST, CORNWALL, TN19 7SX

Like Botallack, Levant Mine and Beam Engine is part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape UNESCO World Heritage Site. The site gives visitors the chance to see a restored 1840s beam engine, used to remove water from mines, running on steam. There’s also the pump engine house, the compressor house and the remains of the count house to explore.

Poldark (2015–2019)

Directed by various; starring Aidan Turner, Eleanor Tomlinson, Kyle Soller, Heida Reed

A few miles from Botallack, Levant Mine also appeared in Poldark. The site doubled as Tressiders’ Rolling Mill, where the copper extracted from the Poldark mine is rolled and cut. A key part of the storyline in series one, the buildings appear in episode six.

The site’s National Trust custodian described how he helped the crew turn back the years ready for filming: ‘I worked with the designers to advise on how the mine would have looked on the surface in the late eighteenth century – a difficult task as there are no photographs from that period and not many images.’ Some construction was carried out on site, including wooden outbuildings and winches. The remainder was created by the visual effects team in post-production.

At Botallack it is not possible to record visitor numbers, but at Levant in the first seven weeks of the 2015 season – just after series one of Poldark had transmitted – the mine attracted 91 per cent more visitors than in the previous year. This was amazing considering that, although important in the story, the mine only featured briefly. The Poldark phenomenon was in full swing.

For more on Poldark, see the entries for Botallack, Holywell, Gunwalloe: Church Cove and Great Chalfield Manor and Garden.

HOLYWELL

NEAR NEWQUAY, CORNWALL

Holywell is a large sandy beach which takes its name from a holy well in one of its caves. Spectacular grassy sand dunes rise to nearly 20 metres (65 feet) in places and there are also ancient signs of habitation from both the iron and bronze ages.

Die Another Day (2002)

Directed by Lee Tamahori; starring Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens

The beach is a popular surfing location – appropriate given that the opening sequence of Die Another Day features our Mr Bond surfing onto the beach. However, Holywell beach was supposed to be North Korea and the actual surfing was shot in Hawaii.

Building the set on and around the lifeguard building.

Bond is betrayed and then captured by the North Koreans, eventually being released in a prisoner exchange. The drama hinges on his revenge as he seeks out the mole who betrayed him. He still makes time for the charms of NSA agent Jinx Johnson, played by Halle Berry, and MI6 agent Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) and fits some killing and blowing things up into his busy schedule. Madonna gives fencing lessons to the under-cover agent who uses his real name.

Although Bond movies are often filmed in glamorous overseas locations, suitable UK sites are used if they can be made to look more exotic. Replicating North Korea took four weeks of set-building. An estimated £500,000 was spent locally on materials, hotels and food. The exterior of a ‘top secret military installation’ was built on top of the existing lifeguard building. Tank traps were added on the beach and a smattering of soldiers completed the illusion. The action sequences that take place inside the building were shot in a studio. The final sequence in the film, still set in North Korea, was shot at another National Trust beach, Penbryn in Wales.

For more on James Bond films, see the entry on Stowe.

The completed set.

Demelza Poldark (Eleanor Tomlinson) at Holywell.

Poldark (2015–2019)

Directed by various; starring Aidan Turner, Eleanor Tomlinson, Harry Richardson, Ellise Chappell

Like Church Cove on the Lizard Peninsula, Holywell became one of the beaches on Ross Poldark’s estate, Nampara. Supposedly right next to each other, Church Cove and Holywell are actually 30 miles apart. Holywell was used for all sorts of scenes in series two to five, including one of Ross’s swims, Caroline and Dwight’s galloping horse-ride and the meetings between Drake and Morwenna. The distinctive offshore islands known as Carter’s and Gulls Rocks make it an easily identifiable location.

The film crew could drive vehicles directly onto the beach here which saved them time as their equipment would be to hand. One slight drawback however was that their 4x4s often got stuck in the sand. The location manager addressed this sinking problem by having a tractor on stand-by which ‘. . .pulls everyone out every ten minutes’. The beach at Holywell is vast and easily accommodated cast, crew, equipment, vehicles and any visitors simultaneously.

For more on Poldark, see the entries for Botallack, Levant Mine and Beam Engine, Gunwalloe: Church Cove and Great Chalfield Manor and Garden.

GUNWALLOE: CHURCH COVE

NEAR HELSTON, CORNWALL