THE GUIDE Autumn

Home , Excalibur Estate, Louis Le Prince

the GUIDE WINTER 2014 A GUIDE TO BRITAIN FROM BRITAIN’S BEST GUIDES

PRESENTING THE PAST

DAN CRUICKSHANK, BBC PRESENTER AND HISTORIAN

BRITAIN ON FILM • THE MAGIC OF HARRY POTTER AND THE INDUSTRY OF BIRMINGHAM • LEGENDS, LIES AND LORE Verdi’s LA TRAVIATA 9 Feb – 13 Mar 2015

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3 NEWS History, Culture and Events The Unnatural History Museum

Denisa Podhrazska, Blue Badge Guide, Czech. BLUE BADGE TOURIST GUIDES Blue Badge Tourist Guides are the official, professional tourist guides of the United Kingdom – recognised by the local tourist bodies and VisitBritain. The Blue Badge is the UK’s highest guiding qualification, awarded only after extensive training and thorough examination. There are over 1000 Blue Badge Guides in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – each region has its own badge. We guide in all the UK’s major tourist attractions, as well as its cities and countryside. In 2013 Guild guides worked with over Where can you find a mermaid, voodoo dolls, sprinkling’ of dead animals. On request, the 1.5 million UK visitors a miniature woolly pig, flying cats and curator will don his red velvet jacket and give dancing rats? In the wonder-cabinets of a guided tour. The Blue Badge is the qualification London’s new museum of curiosities, The This bizarre bazaar is themed, from of excellence in heritage guiding. Last Tuesday Society. natural world objects – including a giant The Guild of Registered Tourist Guides This little shop of horrors in Hackney is woodlouse, Dodo bones and the skeleton of is the national association of Britain’s Blue created and curated by the post-modern Mortimer the lion – to medical samples and Badge guides. Since its foundation in 1950, antiquarian Viktor Wynd. Wynd (his preferred instruments, erotic illustrations, surrealist the Guild has dedicated itself to raising form of address) describes himself as a ‘boy art prints and a collection of Furbies exhibited and maintaining the highest professional who never gave up collecting’. In 2005 he for maximum comic incongruity. standards. installed his curios in a Victorian high street The Last Tuesday Society takes its name Our guides work in the UK’s museums, shop, where he offered lessons in taxidermy from a 19th century movement dedicated to galleries, churches and lead walking, (the new museum is stuffed with stuffed ‘pataphysical studies’, the investigation of the cycling and driver-guided tours throughout stuff), a lecture programme and a venue for absurdly mysterious world ‘beyond the the country. Our members work in over 30 Halloween celebrations and Goth dinner beyond’. Wynd has brought this curious different languages. If it can be guided, parties – guests sit around a table that philosophy to a corner shop in east London – we will guide it. contains a skeleton beneath a glass coffin lid. a Night(mare) at the Museum has This November Wynd transformed his shop come to Hackney. To find out more or to book: into a museum. The £3 ticket price includes a The Last Tuesday Society. 11 Mare St, 0207 403 1115 guild blue-badge.org.uk cup of tea in the museum cafe, which is London E8. Five mins from Bethnal Green [email protected] decorated with coral and an ‘unhealthy Tube, Daily 10am-10.30pm

4 s e d l i F

from around the UK : o t o h

DARK MATTERS P

The second season of star-gazing has started in Northumberland. In December 2013 the area became Britain’s first Dark Sky Park, a part of the country that protects the night-time environment and limits outdoor lighting. Northumberland is now the third-largest area of protected dark sky in the world. This autumn, events will be held across the region, with many opportunities for everyone to get involved in star-gazing. The main focus is Kielder Observatory, which will hold a series of nightwatch events where the public can attend astronomy lectures and observe the night skies. Discover Northumberland with a local Blue Badge Guide: www.neetg.co.uk : y k s n i l p a K

a h s r a t o l a y N a

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r o e t o b o h R P Ladies First Hertford College, Oxford was founded in 1282 and for centuries it was a male enclave. Portraits of its Fellows and Masters line the college hall, beruffed priests and stern dons staring down ABSOLUTELY resolutely from wood-panelled walls and not a single woman among them. PREFABULOUS To mark the 40th anniversary of the year female students were first The post-war British ‘prefab’ provokes estate is being demolished, but one admitted to the college, the likes of humour and affection in equal measure. prefab is being kept to house a social Jonathan Swift and William Tyndale Following the WW11 bombing, history museum. have made way for 21 new portraits, some 150,000 of them were built to The museum has caught the all of them women. Hertford was one accommodate returning soldiers. The imagination of a generation of people of the first all-male Oxford colleges to simple two-bedroomed, prefabricated who grew up with the prefab. Visitors accept women and the exhibition bungalow was a homely symbol of post- have helped finance the project via a includes graduates nominated by war austerity. Designed to last for ten successful internet Kickstarter campaign current staff, students and alumni. years, many survived into the 21st that raised £15,000. This money will go The bold, black and white photo- century, but their numbers are rapidly some way towards preserving the prefab graphs feature former students from diminishing. as a place where residents and visitors all walks of life, including broadcaster The Prefab Museum in Catford is experience oral history, photographs, the vision of photojournalist and curator artworks and films recalling the Natasha Kaplinsky, philosopher Elisabeth Blanchet, who is working at the post-war period. Baroness Warnock and world south London Excalibur Estate. With 186 For more info visit: champion rower Stephanie Cullen. buildings, it forms the largest surviving www.prefabmuseum.uk For a Tour of Oxford with a local group of post-war prefabs in the UK. The Blue Badge Guide visit: www.britainsbestguides.org 5 k n a h s k c i u r C

a The television historian Dan Cruickshank D

: tells Sophie Campbell about his passion

w for historic buildings e i v r e t n I PRESENTING THE PAST

When Dan Cruickshank says he was down at the currently finishing his sixteenth book, his ‘life’s pool the other day, he doesn’t mean swimming. He work’, on his beloved Spitalfields. means the Pool of London, the stretch of water Dan Cruickshank was born in London and between Tower Bridge and London Bridge that brought up in a large, late 18th-century Bedford once bristled with shipping, bringing in goods Estate house on Gower Street. Asked about his from across the known world. earliest London memories, he goes into a frenzy of “I was there just recently, “ he says, “and I saw self-examination. two men pull a timber figurehead out of the water “I have to explore my brain in terms of this about three feet high, early 19th century I think. It question because you have false memories, of looked like an Inca or a South American Indian.” course,” he argues, “I was born in 1949 and I think I The men rang the Museum of London and kept the remember the Festival of Britain site; the Tories figure in water, quite correctly, but he found out destroyed almost everything to do with it in 1951, later that when the museum wasn’t interested they but the shot tower on the South Bank survived for sold it for £50 on eBay. “I really mind about that,” he a while. I remember the site and I remember the says wistfully, “I would have bought it like a shot. shot tower. Do you know how they work? They Bloody right! It’s the biggest and best thing I’ve dropped molten lead from a great height into a ever seen found on the foreshore.” tank of water to make lead pellets.” Cruickshank, 65, is an architectural historian, It’s this discursive style and his huge enthusiasm academic and activist who, until the mid-1990s, for his subject, particularly if it involves his own was busy lecturing, working in writing books and city, that make him so beguiling. He also isn’t afraid journalism – unknown to the wider British public. to say what he thinks; about buildings, about the Then he was asked ‘to turn some of my stuff into city and about the people who influence the daily telly’ and in his mid-forties found a gift for existence of both. intelligent television presenting, both in Britain The Skylon – the 300-foot high, tapering cigar of and abroad. aluminium, lit from within at night, that towered His passion for history, professorial demeanour above the Royal Festival Hall – symbolised the 1951 and distinctive speaking style – ‘Did he whisper?’ is Festival of Britain. It featured in one of his early TV the first thing everyone asks (he didn’t), have made appearances, part of the BBC2 series One Foot in the him a household name. He still fights for causes, Past. “There are several pieces still around,” he says, and he continues to write prolifically. He is “the demolition chap has one, the Museum of 6 Dan Cruickshank was born in London and brought up in a large, late 18th-century Bedford Estate house on Gower Street

7 k n a h s k c i u r C

n a D

: w e i v r e t n I Euston Arch

London has two bits, and the architect it is no longer – and may has one as well. It wasn’t dumped in never be – possible to see the River Lea: that was, in fact, the them again in that Euston Arch.” volatile part of the world. The Euston Arch is another great Instead he is once again Cruickshank passion. He is a co- focusing close to home. founder of the Euston Arch Trust, Home, in the literal which campaigns to rebuild it. This sense, is the 1720s house was the largest Grecian Doric arch ever he shares with his artist built, fronting London’s first intercity partner and his daughter Sir George Gilbert Scott’s Gothic St Pancras Station railway terminus at Euston. It was on a handsome Georgian street in completed in 1838 but destroyed in the Spitalfields. Or rather, half a handsome house prices, has changed beyond 1960s, despite widespread public Georgian street, the other half was belief. “It’s almost incomprehensible outrage and strenuous efforts by early demolished by British Land, the now,” he muses, “but no one came here conservationists, including the poet property developers, in 1975. unless they worked here, there were John Betjeman. “In the 1960s, Spitalfields was a no tourists. The market gave it a “I desperately want to remember the Georgian fragment on the edge of dreadful authenticity; there were Euston Arch,” he says, ”but I’m not London,” he says. “The fruit and veg amazing sights and sounds, it was sure that I really do.” He pauses, “I’m market was nocturnal, so that kept the lurid, it was strange. There were pallets sure I do. ”The names of the destina- developers away, but the historic and boxes of food and strange people tions on the arch… so evocative… and buildings were just rotting. They were lived here and amongst it all were now HS2 [the proposed High Speed listed in the 1950s but they were going, these rickety, gaunt, unloved Georgian Two railway from Euston to the West house by house. The last square of terraces. Nobody wanted them.” Midlands] may bring Euston to life 1730s merchant palaces went for a As he arrived, the last of the Jewish again, so that failed campaign, weirdly, car park.” community was disappearing, and is becoming reality. That’s the way of With his friend and colleague Colin Bangladeshi newcomers were arriving. the world, that’s the way things go.” Amery, now director of the World Sixty years earlier the area was 99% The Arch itself went, not quite into Monuments Fund for Britain, he wrote Jewish. Now, he says, there is ‘barely a the Lea but into a canal near today’s a book called The Rape of Britain . A shadow’ of the kosher delis and Olympic Park. In the 1990s, donor read it and gave them £10,000, businesses that once stretched as far as Cruickshank and his team found a so they set up the Spitalfields Historic Aldgate and Whitechapel. There was a quarter of a giant fluted column there, Buildings Trust to try and save what synagogue in a back garden on its Yorkshire gritstone edges as sharp was left. Princelet Street, now it’s home to the as the day they were quarried almost Once British Land started its Museum of Immigration. 200 years ago. Just before the London demolition, around 40 activists – “I think I probably arrived at the 2012 Olympics, they fished out over architects, historians and people who perfect moment,” he says, “by the early 20 more. cared about the area – squatted the 1980s the greedy lawyers and He speaks with enthusiasm – and remaining buildings. The papers called developers had been pushed away, gratitude – about his phase of filming it the ‘Elder Street Siege’ and in the Denis Severs’ museum was open, abroad. Enthusiasm, because he saw end, the developers relented and put families were moving in and people extraordinary places and things: the houses on the market. were doing up places properly. The Yemen, Mali, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq Cruickshank joined the queue and restaurants on Brick Lane were before and after the fall of Saddam, the bought one for £15,000. charming. All these victories are Yazidis in Kurdistan. Gratitude because Since then the area, along with its pyrrhic in the end, because developers 8 Dennis Severs’ House

“There were amazing sights and sounds, it was lurid, it was strange. There were pallets and boxes of food and strange people lived here”

are clever and cunning and they preserve a few buildings. The only people who can afford to live in them are the bankers.” He notes that British Land are back in the area, redeveloping and rebranding a piece of land between Spitalfields and Shoreditch. He doesn’t seem bitter though, more philosophical. He observes that in the end, however hard you try, you realise that most things either go backwards or stay the same. You can’t always hold back the tide. And on that note, he courteously brings the conversation to an end. He has a book to finish and a programme to do. “It’s about the Gilbert Scott dynasty of architects,” he says, “We’re calling it Great Scotts! of course.” Whisper it softly, it should be one to watch.

Reminders of Jewish Spitalfields 9 k n a h s k c i u r C

n a D

: w e i v r e t n I

Factfile

Great Scotts! The Family that Built Britain will run on BBC Four as part of the BBC’s Gothic season this November. Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust, 19 Princelet Street, Spitalfields www.19princeletstreet.org.uk

He also isn’t afraid to say what he thinks: about buildings, about the city and about the people who influence the daily existence of both 10

TOUCAN PLAY ea home led his Chels el Rossetti fil t Dante Gabri wombat century artis rie included a 19th The menage d to e of animals. le and allowe with a parad he dinner tab s brought to t i later Top, who wa eals. Rossett called ece during m wboy arge centrepi e bird in a co sleep in the l He dressed th nd a toucan. able. sed a llama a the dining-t purcha llama around t it to ride the hat and taugh LEGEND A Dog’s Life

The turnspit dog was a feature of every large 16th century kitchen. LI , The small cooking canine would run in a wheel that turned a roasting spit in the fireplace. This breed was small enough to fit in the wheel and trained to run so the food would cook evenly. Queen Victoria kept two retired turnspits as pets. By the 1900s, the breed had died out. FACTS AND F

Old wives sales Until 1857, it was legal for British husbands to sell their wives. According to newspapers, in 1802: ‘A butcher, sold his wife by auction at Hereford Market. The lot bought for £1-4s and a bowl of punch’. In 1807 the press reported: ‘One of those disgraceful scenes, which have, of late become too common, took place on Friday at Knaresborough. Owing to some jealousy, a man brought his wife and sold her at the market cross for 6d and a quid of tobacco!’

12 MIC NAPOLEON’S BONY E COUNT PART After defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon was exiled to the British island of St. Helena, where he died in 1821. Some historians claim that Napoleon’s penis was HALF A MILLION amputated during his autopsy, possibly by the MICE LIVE IN THE Emperor’s priest Abbé Vignali. In 1916 a British LONDON collector acquired the ‘Vignali Collection’ and in 1972 the putative penis was put up for sale at UNDERGROUND Christie’s auction house in London. On failing to reach the asking price the lot, including Napoleon’s member, was withdrawn. NDS

IAEND S,

AThere aLre sEtorie s ofT medAieval ALle CEonnSers testing the quality and strength of beer not by quaffing, but by sitting in it. They travelled from pub to pub M BRITISH HISTORY clad in sturdy leather britches. A sample of beer FICTION FRO was poured on a wooden bench and the Conner sat on it. If the ale proved suitably sticky when they stood up, it was pronounced fit and ready for consumption. Unfortunately there is no contemporary evidence at all for British ale Conners testing beer in this peculiar way. Bum Deal In 1811, nearly In the 16th century there was a tax known as buttock-mail. a quarter of This was a fine levied by the Scottish church on anyone all women in who had sex outside marriage. The normal punishment Britain were was a public confession, but by paying a fine the convicted named Mary. fornicator could avoid public humiliation. Mail was medieval term for a monetary tax – from the same root as blackmail – and buttock needs no explanation! 13 e r u t a e F e g d i r B

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a the top window of Hicks r received the recognition he deserved. His Highgate cemetery tomb t r

o Ironmongers in Leeds. Behind the William Friese Greene was the first commemorates him as: ‘the inventor P

l lens was its inventor Louis Le Prince. person to use celluloid film in of Kinematography’. a n

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i moving pictures. In 1889 the British The first successful British movie t a the town bridge are the world’s first inventor filmed scenes in London’s was Incident at Clovelly Cottage . N ©

filmed moving pictures. Hyde Park, yet his innovation was Filmed in 1895, the film brought a : h

g Two years later Le Prince ignored (the Lumière brothers are fleeting touch of glamour to its i e

L disappeared from a train in France.

credited as the ‘inventors of cinema’) location of Barnet and paved the way n

e Scotland Yard searched for him, but i and Friese Greene went bankrupt. for the rise of film as popular v i

V his body was never found – fuelling He collapsed and died in 1921, entertainment. 14 Film became popular entertainment and Then, unexpectedly, the silver screen four thousand cinemas were built fought back. From a low point in the during the early 1900s. By 1945, movie- 1980s, UK film admissions trebled. New mad Britons were going to the ‘pictures’ film studios opened; in 1990s the WW11 twice a week. airplane hangars of Leavesden were But the sudden success of the movie converted for the filming of the James theatre was followed by an equally Bond, Star Wars and Harry Potter swift decline. Cinema’s nemesis – franchises, while Pinewood Studios is television – had arrived. The small doubling in size and creating a new screen entertained people at home, and outpost in Wales. by 1980 some three quarters of the British film continues to thrive, country’s grand picture houses were appreciated throughout the world for its gone, turned into bingo halls or unique mix of costume drama, offbeat demolished. comedies and literary adaptations.

GREAT BRITISH FILM STARS CHAPLIN VIVIEN LEIGH In 1889, the year after moving pictures In the 1950s Vivien Leigh was the film- were invented, a boy was born just off star half of the world’s most famous London’s Old Kent Road. When he showbiz couple. Her husband, was two, his father left leaving his Laurence Olivier, was merely the mother destitute. By seven he was ‘greatest stage actor in the world’. There living in a workhouse. When his are stories of people being so overcome mother was admitted to an asylum, he by their glamour that they would faint went to live with his alcoholic father on seeing them. Leigh found this kind and by 14 he was homeless. of attention trying. Ten years later he was living in Born in India to British colonial Hollywood and in 1916 signed a parents, she studied theatre at London’s movie contract for $670,000 a year, RADA with a determination to become making Charlie Chaplin, at 26 years a great actress. Hollywood turned her old, one of the highest-paid people in into a movie star; in 1939 she won the the world. Chaplin’s rise from misery, ‘Search for Scarlett O’Hara’ and played through music hall performer to the lead in Gone with the Wind . In 1951 become the first global movie star she reprised her stage role as Blanche could only be realised in the United DuBois in the film of A Streetcar Named States. But his street tramp character – Desire . Leigh won Best Actress Oscars who first appeared on screen a for both films. While there have been century ago this year – wore an many great British film actresses, she English bowler hat, and had its roots was one of the few who was in London’s streets and workhouses. undoubtedly a film star. HITCHCOCK ELIZABETH TAYLOR In 1904 a five-year-old boy was sent to Few child actors go on to succeed as Leytonstone Police Station in (what adults. Hampstead-born Elizabeth was then) Essex. He carried a note Taylor defied these odds, graduating from his father, requesting the officer from a Lassie film via National Velvet to to lock him away for five minutes as become an MGM star during the punishment for behaving badly. Golden Age of Hollywood. Alfred Hitchcock went on to become Her fame peaked when she played the master of suspense movies, Cleopatra to her future husband making Blackmail in 1929 – the first Richard Burton’s Mark Anthony. Taylor British sound feature – and a series of won an Oscar in 1966 for Who’s Afraid of films at Islington’s Gainsborough Virginia Woolf? and continued to act Studios, before relocating to until the Flintstones in 1994. Married Hollywood. His short stay in a eight times – twice to Richard Burton – London police cell gave him lifelong his Valentine’s Day present to her one fear of policeman and wrongful year was ‘La Peregrina’, the famous accusations, a theme that ran through pearl, formerly owned by Queen Mary I many of his great films. of England. 15 e y r h p u a t r g a o t o e h P F

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LONDON ROYAL HOSPITAL, GREENWICH wrapped here, than another arrives. It has doubled as the When Queen Mary II instructed Christopher Wren to build grounds of Buckingham Palace in The King’s Speech , served a hospital for retired seamen in 1694, she might have noted as French Barricades for Les Misérables , staged wedding that, ‘in the future it should also serve as a great place for the number two in Four Weddings and a Funeral and hosted making of moving pictures’. No sooner has one film set Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow for The Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides . Most recently, it stood in for a Berlin street in Muppets Most Wanted, and featured prominently in Thor: The Dark World.

ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT, LONDON This exquisite Norman church, survivor of the Reformation and the Great Fire, stood in as Nottingham Cathedral in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It was where Joseph Fiennes, prays for forgiveness in Shakespeare in Love, where Lord Blackwood is apprehended while preparing a human sacrifice in Sherlock Holmes and where Hugh Grant fails to marry ‘Duckface’ in Four Weddings and a Funeral . OXFORD Oxford colleges have provided both inspiration and locations for a host of British films.

St Bartholomew The Great The Riot Club

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Shadowlands tells the story of CS Lewis and his WESTMINSTER relationship with an American poet. In the film, Lewis’s The current Brit-hit, Pride recreated the 1980s miners college Magdalen and its 15th century chapel, feature in a protest on London’s Westminster Bridge, while the scene where the couple attend the May Day morning upcoming film Suffragette , starring Meryl Streep as Mrs festivities – an ancient tradition celebrated by choristers of Pankhurst, is the first movie to be allowed to film inside the the College choir, who sing from the top of the chapel tower Houses of Parliament. at dawn. The Eagle and Child pub, home to the Inklings writers group, also appeared in the film. MANCHESTER In 2007, Phillip Pullman’s Oxford-based literary trilogy Manchester Town Hall, with its iconic Gothic Revival was brought to the screen as the Golden Compass . The interior, regularly stands in for the Houses of Parliament. author’s former college, Exeter stands in as the fictional It posed as the Palace of Westminster for Robert Downey Jordan College. in Sherlock Homes (2009) and in the Margaret Thatcher bio- The university town is the setting for The Riot Club , which pic The Iron Lady . It also features in the upcoming tells the story of Oxford’s elite, tearaway bad boys and their Frankenstein , starring Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe. activities as members of the infamous Bullingdon Club. LIVERPOOL Liverpool is the chameleon of film locations, frequently disguising itself as other cities. For Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit it was ‘Moscow’ in a night-time car chase, with the ‘Three Graces’ buildings and the River Mersey providing a ‘Russian’ backdrop. For Chariots of Fire much of ‘Paris’ is actually Merseyside. The British Embassy, where the Prince of Wales tries to persuade Liddell to run on the Sabbath, is Liverpool Library and Town Hall; the Paris Olympic stadium is Bebington Oval Sports Centre. Scenes for the 2011 action adventure Captain America were filmed at Stanley Dock and the city is the backdrop for Belfast in 71 , a film set during the Northern Ireland troubles. Manchester Town Hall

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Louis Le Prince single-lens camera Paul’s Theatrograph Little Nellie MUSEUM VISITS NATIONAL MEDIA MUSEUM, BRADFORD renowned for its lantern shows. Huge lanterns projected This museum’s galleries are home to the National large, hand-painted slide shows. This was ‘cinema’ before Cinematography Collection. We asked Associate Curator the moving picture was invented. Toni Booth to choose his ‘Top 5’ items. As well as the permanent exhibitions, the media Louis Le Prince single-lens camera, 1888 . The camera that museum has three cinemas – including an IMAX screen – filmed the ‘world’s first movie’. and hosts two film festivals each year. Agnes May Turner on a swing, 1902 . The stills from a film www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk made by photographer and inventor Edward Turner are the earliest existing examples of colour moving pictures. LONDON FILM MUSEUM Teeth worn by Christopher Lee as Count Dracula . The This central London museum is currently hosting actor designed and wore these fangs in the 1958 Hammer Bond in Motion , an exhibition of vehicles from the Horror film Dracula. When he broke a container of red fluid James Bond films. Highlights include a scale model on the fangs, ‘blood’ dripped from the ends of the teeth. of the Westland helicopter featured in Skyfall and Theatrograph Projector Mark 1, 1896 . Robert W Paul first iconic Bond cars such as ‘Wet Nellie’, the Lotus Esprit demonstrated his projector at Finsbury Technical College in S1 from The Spy Who Loved Me , the Rolls-Royce 1896 (on the same day as the showing of the Lumière Phantom III from Goldfinger and the Aston Martin Cinematographe in London). It’s the prototype for all DB5 from GoldenEye. modern film projectors. London Film Museum, 45 Wellington Street, WC2 Lantern slides from the Polytechnic Institution, Bond exhibition: 10am-6pm every day until March 2015 London. From 1850 the Polytechnic in Regent Street was Tickets £14.50/£9.50 www.londonfilmmuseum.com 18 College Hill House near Edinburgh Oxenford Gatehouse in Surrey

STAYCATIONS Seen the film? Want to stay in the location? Here are some building. Pugin’s medieval confection is so authentic that it historic movie venues you can sleep in. appeared as the home of Maid Marian in the Russell Crowe A Gothic Temple , built in 1741 to a design by the Robin Hood film. architect James Gibbs, dominates the gardens of Stowe in College Hill House near Edinburgh featured in the Buckinghamshire. It features in the Bond film The World is climactic scenes of the 2006 blockbuster The Da Vinci Code . Not Enough, where Bond attends the funeral of Elektra’s father. To stay in one of these buildings visit: At first glance, Oxenford Gatehouse in Surrey looks like www.landmarktrust.org.uk You will be contributing to the an ancient building. It was actually built in 1843 by trust’s mission to restore and preserve historic buildings Augustus Pugin, architect of our national parliament in the UK.

A Gothic Temple, built in 1741 to a design by the architect James Gibbs

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“My fascination with the boy wizard began 14 years ago,” explains Henrietta. “I was taking an American family around Britain. By day three their young boy had tired of museums and was bored with counting sheep from the car. His mother asked if I wouldn’t mind playing a Harry Potter audio book for him, I obliged. By the time we got to Edinburgh I was hooked. “I left the family at the airport and bought the CD of the second book for my drive back to London. When I arrived, I was so engrossed that I sat outside my house in the car for an hour until the story had finished. “I bought each of the seven-book series as soon as they came out. I even queued outside Waterstones bookshop waiting for the third book to be released at midnight. When the first film appeared in 2001, I tried to borrow my young nephew so that I wouldn’t be the only grown-up without a child in the cinema. I needn’t have worried – over half the audience were adults. “Those enthusiastic movie goers inspired me to create a Harry Potter locations tour. But the producers were secretive about where it was filmed and a lot of backgrounds were difficult to identify. Fortunately, when the DVD came out I could freeze frame the action and work out where scenes were set. “Fans on the internet were arguing about where the films had been shot. As a Blue Badge Guide I had a head start and could immediately recognise a location like St Paul’s Cathedral – the church’s geometric staircase features in the ‘remembrall’ scene in the fourth film. “The films have turned London’s King’s Cross station into a tourist destination. In the first movie Harry departs for Hogwarts School from platform 9¾ (they filmed at 21 e c r o f

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platforms 3 and 4). The station Northumberland – where the the wand at every traffic light we were installed a Harry Potter luggage Quidditch flying scenes are filmed – to stopped at, she could magic them from trolley on the concourse for visiting the little-known Goathland Railway red to green – she was delighted. fans. Unfortunately, during a recent Station on the North Yorkshire Moors, “For older visitors who have grown refurbishment they removed a which acts as Hogwarts Station. up with the books, the stories create a wrought iron bridge that appeared in “The stories are so powerful that common bond. I was contacted by the first film. If anyone knows where it some of my younger visitors are three girls in their 20s, one Spanish, is, would they let me know. convinced they are real. One boy was one Argentinian and one Mexican. “London’s river crossings feature in annoyed with his mother when we They got to know each other on a several films. In the third movie, the arrived in Oxford, because he thought Harry Potter internet forum and saved Knight bus gets stuck on a bridge. he was actually going to attend up to travel to London, where they People thought this was London Hogwarts School. A five-year old girl met for the first time. I took them to Bridge, but I worked out that it is was upset that the wand we bought Oxford. They dressed up in character actually Lambeth Bridge. Tower and from the Harry Potter Shop didn’t and I found myself walking the sober the Millennium bridges appear during work. She wanted to go back and ‘City of Learning’ with group of young the death-eaters scene in the Half- exchange it. I told her that if she waved adults wearing a cape, carrying a wand Blood Prince. and sporting a Gryffindor scarf and “The Leaky Cauldron Pub – garters. I didn’t wear a cape! entrance to Diagon Alley – was filmed “What’s great about these tours is in two places in London. For the first that I can help a younger generation movie they used Leadenhall Market in discover British history. It’s difficult to the City of London, for the third film it involve children in a cultural tour, but moved to Borough Market. mention Harry Potter and you get “The highlight of a Harry Potter tour their attention. So when I am is Christ Church College in Oxford, the showing them sites that have been setting for Hogwarts Hall. It features in used in the filming, they are the first three films, but when they subconsciously learning about were preparing the fourth movie the the real history of the building. producers wanted to park their “It’s extraordinary to think that this vehicles on the college meadow. A is the result of the imagination of one farmer was growing wheat there and woman, JK Rowling. Her powerful they asked him to harvest it early. He idea of a young boy wizard, fighting refused. I am friendly with the bowler- for good, has enthralled a generation hatted college porters, who tipped me of readers and film fans, and it has off about this. led them on pilgrimage to discover “I am pleased that the Harry Potter Harry Potter and Britain.” films have highlighted some of England’s less well-known tourist For a tour with Henrietta visit: attractions, from the stunning www.henriettaferguson.com medieval Alnwick Castle in Leadenhall Market 22 Birmingham born Blue Badge Guide Ian Jelf tells us about his city’s industrial heritage MADE IN BIRMINGHAM “I have lived my whole life on page 74 of the Birmingham A-Z,” quips Ian Jelf. “I grew up on a Victorian terrace in Bearwood, and went to the local Warley High. It was a tough, working-class school, where one fellow pupil, Frank Skinner – now a well-known comedian – ran a dinner- money protection racket.” Like generations of Brummies, Ian’s parents made their living in the city’s factories. “My dad worked for a tube manufacturer, my mum at pen-nib makers. Their only ambition for me was that I didn’t go to work in a factory.” So Ian went to Wednesbury College in the Black Country. “It was only ten miles down the road, but culturally a world apart. I often couldn’t understand the local accent. They add extra syllables where there aren’t any: nine is pronounced ‘noi-on’ and you is ‘youw’. Black Country dialect has remnants of the old Anglo-Saxon, so ‘two houses’ are ‘two housen’ and ‘you are’ becomes ‘youw bist’.” When Ian left college he took a job at Birmingham Railway Museum, this inspired him to study for the Heart of England Blue Badge. When the museum’s budget – and “I have lived my whole “Like generations of Brummies, life on page 74 of the Ian’s parents made their living Birmingham A-Z” in the city’s factories” 23 “In medieval times it was an insignificant market town of Soho House a thousand people. By the 19th century it was the fastest- growing city in Europe”

Jewellery Quarter 24 Ian’s job – were cut in 1995, he became a full-time guide. Though Ian didn’t end up working in a factory, he spends a lot of time talking about them. “Birmingham was born from manufacturing,” he explains. “In medieval times it was an insignificant market town of a thousand people, by the 19 th century it was the fastest-growing city in Europe. “But manufacturing didn’t begin here with the Industrial Revolution,” he emphasises. “The city is on the main route from Stafford, Warwick and Stratford down to London. The medieval lords exploited this by importing coal and ore from the Black Country, producing iron goods and sending them to London. The pattern was established; mined in the Black Country, manufactured in Birmingham, sold across the world – and talked about in Solihull. “During the 1600s, local metal workers forged Civil War sword blades that cut bloody swathes through Charles I’s army. That is why the Royalists attacked the town and why, since then, we have been a refuge for non-conformists. That tolerance has had a huge impact; many of the city fathers, such as the Quaker Cadburys, come from this tradition. “Two men defined the city’s manufacturing history, Matthew Boulton and James Watt – an industrial love affair immortalised on our £50 note. Boulton was the son of a Birmingham buckle and trinket-maker who took over the family business. Watt was a Presbyterian Scot, who came to city to collect money owed to him from a company bought by Boulton. “Boulton had the innovative idea to locate all his workers in one building. So he bought some cheap land and built the Soho Manufactory. It was, arguably, the first modern factory in the world. When Boulton met Watt in 1774, their mutual National Trust preserved Back to Backs passion for industrial invention launched the factory revolution. Boulton manufactured Watt’s improved design “As Mayor, Chamberlain believed that the city should run for the steam engine – the machine that powered the mines utilities for the common good. He used council money to and mills of Britain. buy the local gas and water companies and to make sure Birmingham had clean water and affordable lighting. No “Made in Birmingham’ is still modern mayor could imagine that kind of power. He used profits to rebuild large parts of the city centre and fund the something to be proud of, but city’s museum and art gallery. I would say that, I was made “This political and industrial legacy is Birmingham’s tourism story. Sarehole Mill is a rare survivor, an 18 th century here too” mill that once belonged to Matthew Boulton, now restored to working order. And in the city centre, a courtyard of back- “Birmingham’s tribute to Boulton was to restore his house to-back Victorian workers’ houses that was once a slum is as a museum in the 1990s. The building celebrates an now a National Trust restored visitor attraction. extraordinary polymath who installed the world’s first gas “The city’s craft traditions are best seen in the jewellery lights in 1802 (so the factory could run at night) and quarter. Forty years ago, the only visitors to these streets and developed an early ‘photocopier’. Boulton was a keen alleys were shopkeepers looking for stock, but now they member of the Lunar Society – a group of entrepreneurs have opened up to the public. You can see the jewellers at and thinkers, including Josiah Wedgwood and Erasmus work and order hand-made designs. There’s also an award- Darwin, who met during the full moon to plot the creation winning jewellery museum. of the modern world. “The quarter retains its industrial charm. You walk up “If Boulton founded Birmingham, Joseph Chamberlain rickety staircases and knock on the door to find a maker. made it work. He came to the smoke-filled city from a genteel I have done this on numerous occasions, most importantly life in London, and never truly left. His shareholding at his when we chose my wife’s engagement and wedding rings. uncle’s screw-making business made him rich. He sold up and “The jewellery quarter is a modern day snapshot of what became the city mayor, with big plans for urban improvement. made this city. Small, independent craftsmen, manufacturers “He was inspired by Bournville. Built in the 1890s by the and entrepreneurs. I am always reminding visitors that there Cadbury chocolate dynasty, this green utopia was Britain’s are more people in the city working in manufacturing than first garden village. Chamberlain used it as his blueprint for in services. ‘Made in Birmingham’ is still something to be the construction of a series of airy, village-style estates to proud of, but I would say that, I was made here too.” accommodate the growing number of factory workers. They would even vet potential residents to make sure they were of For a tour with Ian Jelf ‘good character’. His legacy continued and Birmingham was visit: www.bluebadge.co.uk the largest housing provider in Europe until well after WW11. 25 MY FAVOURITE Blue Badge Guides show you their favourite places around the UK

...TOWER

Archirondel tower symbolises Jersey’s position as an outpost of the British Isles, a situation that has existed since 1204. I like this permanent reminder that ...SHIP the island was garrisoned by British troops and has been defended by a local Militia since then. The island’s Governor, Sir Henry Seymour Conway, started building these towers in the late 1770s; they pre-date English Martello towers Dazzle ship is a surprising stripy by almost 15 years. This tower at Archirondel Bay was the penultimate one to be sight that meets you down at built in 1794. Unusually it has a gun battery at its base and three, rather than Liverpool waterfront. Part of the four machicolations around the top of the tower. First World War commemorations, rather than being a sombre tribute, Arthur Lamy it is actually a delightfully playful Blue Badge Guide Jersey arthur arthurthebluebadgeguide.com piece. Dazzle paintwork was the @ brainchild of artist Norman Wilkinson, a Royal Navy volunteer. The intention was not camouflage but distortion. Abstract shapes and colours were used to disguise the form or direction of travel to ...MUSEUM confuse enemy fire. The stripes are the work of 91-year-old …is the British Museum. As a guide Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez I enjoy working there today, but it and add a fun splash of colour to was also a great “playground” for the waterfront. my children when they were young. Harriet Gilmour Blue Badge Guide They really enjoyed looking at the Liverpool City Region model of Vindolanda fort, and the harrietgilmour gmail.com @ written tablets found in the Roman fortress. These amazing wooden ‘postcards’ have survived almost 2,000 years. Their messages are timeless, one man is annoyed with his surly friend who ‘hasn’t sent me a single letter’; another is a birthday party invitation. When my elder daughter finished her archaeology degree this year, we visited the fort on Hadrian’s Wall. When I drove my younger daughter to study archaeology in nearby Durham, I couldn’t help but feel how much the museum had influenced me, and my family. Jane Hickey Blue Badge Guide London 26 jane.hickey btinternet.com @

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