Horsted Keynes is on TV in one shape or form (usually Horsted Keynes Bluebell
Railway station) almost every week.
We will try to list below the latest local
film news so that you can set the video! After a vert quiet period the Bluebell
station comes alight with film crews. The village shop sells out of fags and
snacks and star spotting starts afresh!
THE WOMAN IN BLACK
In a very busy month for the Bluebell railway perhaps our most famous
visitor for many years is in the village to film his latest non-Harry Potter
role. Yes no less than Daniel Radcliffe is down at the station and the local
girl's are all a Twitter - literally!
SHERLOCK HOLMES II
Stephen Fry was down here for night shooting in the middle of October 2010
to film "the exciting denoumant" (as your webmaster was told) of the latest
incarnation of the classic tales.
WIND IN THE WILLOWS
Filmed here in 1997 this essentially British film starred many of the "Monty
Python" team. The special effects where the cast climb from a moving Bluebell
Railway carriage was in fact set up in the Horsted Keynes coal siding. A huge
painted scenery roll was wound behind a static train. Just like they did in the
early silent movies! Another sequence involved the crew taking over the line at
Freshfield. Here they managed to "crash" a locomotive without it ever leaving
the tracks! How? Simple, they buried a mock-up of the green locomotive tender in
the embankment.
STATION JIM filmed in
several parts of the
Bluebell Railway this delightful BBC Film was only shown in 2002 despite being
filmed in a very wet and inclement autumn of 2000. Lots of Bluebell Railway
action. The main station was at Kingscote just up the line from Horsted Keynes.
THE RAILWAY CHILDREN was
of course filmed all along the Bluebell Railway. On one notable day there were three
camera crews working at the same time! The film is available on video and DVD so
do get it if you would like the best coverage of the Bluebell for ages. Nicely
made, the kids will love it. Enthusiasts' web site
Bluebell Railway film site
CHARLOTTE GRAY had a very
important scene filmed at Holywell waterworks where the film crew twice "blew
up" a train at 2am on two successive nights (despite being a special effect it still made a very loud
bang and smashed one of our windows in the process).
The film lights had to be turned down as they interfered with planes landing at
Gatwick Airport, the crew sidestepped "foot and mouth" restrictions, and the
director went back to Australia soon after seeing the first preview! Available
on video and DVD if you insist, the film is rubbish and cost Channel 4 a small
fortune.
The
"Charlotte Gray" site disappeared from the web a few weeks after
opening.
BBCtv for UK TELEVISION
filmed at several places in the village at the end of January 2003. These were
for the small promotional bits that are broadcast between TV programmes and
featured some very well behaved and very cold dogs. As the items were for
broadcast in the Spring the crew had to hose the thick snow away. Pity as the
village looked magical with a blanket of snow on it.
NORTH AND SOUTH This BBC
TV four-part adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's feisty and passionate love story,
set across the social divide in the changing world of Victorian industrial
society. Stars Daniela Denby-Ashe and Richard Armitage was filmed at the
Bluebell in some of the hottest weather of 2004! Who'd be an actor
wearing a stovepipe hat and a Victorian collar in an 80 degree heat wave? Lots
of "day for night" and smoke machines tried to give an impression of the very
early railways.
Wash the snow away and pretend that it's spring!
The BBC filming for UK
Television in midwinter outside the Green Man.
OTHER FILMS Ken Russell
loved filming on The Bluebell Railway and around the village of Horsted Keynes.
Many of his early works had scenes filmed here including "Listomania",
"Mahler", and "Savage Messiah" where your webmaster as a young man appeared
briefly as an extra on Horsted Keynes platform 1.
SAVAGE
MESSIAH
Filmed at Hosted Keynes in 1971
before much of the later development took place.
The man above is the director,
Ken Russell !
If you would like to see the whole Horsted Keynes sequence then click
above.
One of your webmasters was an extra passenger in a carriage during the
filming but I must have been on the wrong side as now I can't recognise myself! If
however you would care to look here you will find a
picture of me when five years later I appeared as an Imperial Stormtrooper in "Star Wars".
