Harry Potter in Berkshire

Harry Potter in Berkshire

Bracknell – Picket Post Close

[The Dursley family home in Picket Post Close]

The town of Bracknell, situated in Berkshire around thirty-three miles west of London, derives its name from Braccen-Heale meaning ‘Bracken covered Secret Place’. It is first mentioned in a Winkfield Boundary Charter of 942. Today the town has expanded and absorbs parts of Winkfield along with Warfield and Binfield. Other parts include the old village of Easthampstead (whose attractions include a Bronze Age round barrow at Bill Hill and a park that was a favoured hunting lodge: Easthampton was also where Catherine of Aragon was banished until her divorce from King Henry VIII was finalised) and the hamlet of Ramslade.

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However, the town is still surrounded, on the east and south, by the vast expanse of Swinley Woods and Crowthorne Woods. To the northeast of the town is to be found the Quelm Stone, a Standing Stone, and to the southwest is Caesar’s Camp, an Iron Age hill fort.

One of the oldest buildings in the town is the Old Manor public house, a 17th century brick manor house featuring a number of priest holes. Next door once stood the Hind’s Head coaching inn, where it is said Dick Turpin, the infamous highwayman, used to drink. It is believed that there were once underground tunnels between the two, along which wanted persons could escape. In fact the town was never regarded as genteel, and in 1723 a troop of mounted Grenadier Guards had a pitched battle with a group of ruffians called the Wokingham Blacks near the town centre and managed to capture twenty-nine of them.

Oscar Wilde and his wife, Constance, were regular visitors and it cannot be coincidence that in Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest there appears the character of Lady Bracknell. Of especial interest to them would have been South Hill Park, a mansion dating from 1760, that now houses a large arts centre and the Wilde Theatre, opened in 1984. South Hill Park has become the home to a number of major music festivals in recent times.

Much of what the visitor sees today was built after 1949 when Bracknell was designated a new town in the aftermath of the World War II, as up until then it was just a village-come-small-town. The location was chosen over White Waltham, an alternative possibility, because the Bracknell site avoided encroaching on good quality agricultural land, and had the additional advantage of being on a railway line with a direct service to London.

The new town was planned for twenty-five thousand people (though it is currently double this number); it was intended to occupy over one thousand hectares of land on and around what is now known as Old Bracknell. The existing town centre and industrial areas were to be retained, with new industry brought in to provide jobs. However, the town has since expanded far beyond its intended size with the present town centre being a 1960s design, considered by many to be in need of a major refurbishment, if not demolition.

A feature of a number of the town’s new estates that causes great confusion for outsiders and newcomers alike is the fact that streets only have names, not titles. For example in Birch Hill, Crown Wood, Great

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Hollands and other areas there is no ‘Road’, ‘Avenue’ or ‘Street’, just ‘Frobisher’, ‘Jameston’, ‘Juniper’, ‘Jevington’ etc. although the residential streets are named in alphabetical order starting in Great Hollands, with As, through Ds, such as Donnybrook, in Hanworth, Js, such as Jameston and Jevington in Birch Hill, and beyond.

The town became successful in attracting high-tech industries, and has become home to companies such as Panasonic and Fujitsu (as well as 3M, who occupied Winchester House, a twelve-storey structure of ‘brutalist’ architecture, until moving to Farley Wood on the edge of town in 2004). Bracknell is also home to the central Waitrose distribution centre and head office, and the United Kingdom headquarters of the BMW Group. Some of the country’s most sophisticated super computers were housed in Bracknell at the Metrological Office building until relocation to Exeter in 2003.

Although manufacturing industry has largely disappeared, it should be mentioned that the Thomas Lawrence brickworks on the north side of the town was famous for the ‘red rubber’ bricks to be found in the Royal Albert Hall and Westminster Cathedral, and in restoration work at No. 10 Downing Street and Hampton Court Palace.

Bracknell has been used as a location in several films, such as Terry Gilliam’s 1981 film, Time Bandits, with Sean Connery (which used Birch Hill) and The Offence, a Sidney Lumet production from 1972, again with Sean Connery. Scenes for the latter, a psychological thriller, were shot in the town centre, on Broadway, Charles Square and Market Street. The flat for Connery’s character was filmed at the listed Point Royal, and the bulk of the outdoor scenes were taken around Wild Ridings, specifically Arncliffe, Crossfell, Mill Pond and Mill Lane. The town also features in Buddy’s Song, a 1991 film with Roger Daltry and Chesney Hawkes.

On the small screen Bracknell can be spotted in the detective drama series Pie in the Sky, where Waterside Park was used as the exterior of the police headquarters. Bracknell has even made it onto Playstation 3, where in Resistance: Fall of Man (and also in the sequel, Resistance: 2) the town becomes the location at which power conduits travel deep underground to supply the Chimeran fortresses.

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However, by far the most famous resident of the town must be Harry Potter himself, for it is at No. 12 Picket Post Close, a rather non-descript house in the area of Winkfield that the Dursley family reside. This was the location used to stand in for No. 4 Privet Drive, Little Whingeing, Surrey in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with filming taking no less than two weeks to complete (though for, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 a studio set was used in place of location filming). Following the success of the 2001 film the owners decided to place the house, a three-bedroom suburban cul-de-sac, up for sale by auction in 2003 with an asking price of £250,000.

In case readers are wondering, the answer is, yes, there is a cupboard under the stairs, similar to the one where Harry was forced to live by his relatives. Any potential visitors are reminded that, whereas you are welcome to take photographs from the street, please do not entertain any ideas of ringing the front door bell to see if Harry is at home! This is a strictly private property.

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