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 GREAT GROUP RATES AVAILABLE Call our box office on 020 7845 9300 or your preferred agent for more details 020 7492 1525 020 7580 6793 0844 412 4650 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] London Coliseum St Martin’s Lane, London, WC2N 4ES | Visit us eno.org | Find us on Photo by Tristram Kenton Contents 4 News The unnatural history museum; star-gazing in Northumberland; a prefab history museum; Hertford College celebrates its former female students 6 Interview Presenter and historian Dan Cruickshank tells Sophie Campbell about his passion for historic buildings 12 Legends, Lies And Lore Fact and fiction from British history Sue King, Chair to the Guild of Registered Tourist Guides 14 Britain on Film Marc Zakian uncovers the story of British film – A WARM WELCOME from its history, to its locations and movie stars TO ‘THE GUIDE’... 20 Tour de Force In this issue Sophie Campbell interviews TV Two expert guides tell us about their tours – presenter and historian Dan Cruickshank. from Harry Potter to Birmingham London Blue Badge Guides have much to thank him for, especially when they take 26 My Favourite… visitors to Spitalfields. Two centuries ago the area was home to Blue Badge Guides on towers, ships and museums Huguenot silk weavers, whose attics hummed to the sound of busy looms. In the 1970s, Cruickshank was instrumental in saving these historic houses from demolition. The silk looms hum no more. But it is still a vibrant area, with Sunday markets selling the foods and clothing of people from the many nations who have settled there. But there are also dark stories to tell: in 1888 Jack the Ripper committed his notorious murders in this area. 1888 was also the year that the world’s first 4 6 moving images were filmed, in Leeds. In the main feature our editor, Marc Zakian, uncovers the history of Britain on film, following the stories of our great directors and actors, and guiding us through some of the country’s iconic film locations. The locations featured in the Harry Potter films have become tourist attractions. Blue Badge Guide Henrietta Ferguson takes us on a ‘Potty’ tour, and recounts the stories that fans 14 20 of the boy wizard love to hear. From the ‘Dark Arts’ we travel to the ‘Black Editor: Marc Zakian Publisher: Country’ and the City of Birmingham, where Guild of Registered Tourist Guides ©2014 T: 020 7403 1115 E: [email protected] guide Ian Jelf takes us on a tour of its industrial Design and print: Editorial Assistance: Mark King MYPEC Tel: 0113 257 9646 W: www.mypec.co.uk heritage. Lit by the light of the full moon, Display advertising: Andy Bettley inventors and scientists shared their ideas at n Project Manager: Maggie Barnes-Aoussou T: 07846 979625 E: [email protected] a meetings of the Lunar Society – their ingenuity i k T: 020 7403 1115 E: [email protected] a fuelled the growth of Britain as a great Z c manufacturing nation. r This magazine is produced by the Guild of Registered Tourist Guides – the national 9 3 a association for Blue Badge Guides (the highest guiding qualification in Britain.) 4 We hope the stories in this magazine will M 0 : - 3 o Email: theguide @blue-badge.org.uk • www.britainsbestguides.org inspire you to take a tour with a qualified Blue t 5 o 0 h 2 Badge guide. They will enlighten you with : p N r fascinating snippets from their storehouse of S e S v I o knowledge, and open your eyes to the wonders c t of our nation’s rich and diverse heritage. n o r Welcome to the sixth issue of The Guide. F ENGLAND LONDON WALES NORTHERN SCOTLAND GREEN BADGE IRELAND 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 G : 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 f T o t 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.