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Abstract
From 1851, the British government became responsible for the management of Hampton Court Palace in an arrangement of the Crown Lands Act, leading to the government maintaining the site on behalf of the reigning monarch ‘in right of Crown’. From 1911, the government considered whether to allow filmmakers access to Hampton Court for their productions. This article will trace the history of the film policy relating to this site until 1989, when Historic Royal Palaces was formed as an Executive Agency of Government to maintain the site, later acquiring charitable status in its own right in 1998. It will draw upon material held in the National Archives, which demonstrates how the film policy relating to Hampton Court adapted and changed over time. This article will analyse key film projects, both realised and unrealised, including Royal England: The Story of the Empire’s Throne (1911), Hampton Court Palace (1926) and The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) to explore how the government approached allowing filmmakers access to the site, and the reasons behind their rigid stance toward film production on location within the broader context of the government’s support toward the British film industry more generally.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tobias Hochscherf, as well as the two peer-reviewers for offering helpful, kind and constructive comments on my article. I would also like to thank the staff working at the British Film Institute and The National Archives for their assistance in helping me with my research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Robert Hewison, The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline (London: Methuen, 1987); Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Volume 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London and New York: Verso, 1994); Patrick Wright, On Living In An Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
2 Andrew Higson, ‘Re-presenting the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film’, in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, ed. Lester Friedman (London: University of Central London Press, 1993), 109.
3 Higson, Film England: Culturally English Filmmaking since the 1990s (London and New York: I.B.Tauris, 2011), 1.
4 See, for example Sue Beeton, Film Induced Tourism (Canada: Channel View Publications, 2005); Warwick Frost, ‘Braveheart-ed Ned Kelly: Historic Films, Heritage Tourism and Destination Image’, Tourism Management 27 (2006): 247–254; Daniela Carl, Sara Kindon and Karen Smith, ‘Tourists’ Experiences of Film Locations: New Zealand as “Middle-Earth”‘, Tourism Geographies 9, no. 1 (2007): 49–63.
5 Amy Sargeant, ‘The Darcy Effect: Regional Tourism and Costume Drama’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 3, nos. 3–4 (1998): 177–186.
6 Mandy Merck (ed.), The British monarchy on screen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 1.
7 ‘In right of Crown’ means that the current monarch holds the site in trust for the next monarch, and in law cannot sell, lease or otherwise dispose of any interest of the site. The reason that this site is held ‘in right of Crown’ is due to it having been a former royal palace.
8 The National Archives (TNA) WORK 19/533: Leo Stormont to Secretary of Works Department, 10 June 1911.
9 Ibid. Emphasis in original.
10 Ibid: Memoranda between ‘E.C.’, ‘W.F.D.’ and ‘S.K.D’, 10 June 1911–16 June 1911.
11 ‘The Hippodrome’, Pall Mall Gazette, 27 June 1911: 2.
12 TNA WORK 16/551: Paul Kimberley to the Office of Works, 27 October 1919.
13 Ibid.
14 TNA WORK 19/1129: ‘Copy of Cinematograph Policy 1922’, 5 November 1926.
15 Roger Smither and David Walsh, ‘Unknown Pioneer: Edward Foxen Cooper and the Imperial War Museum Film Archive, 1919–1934’, Film History 12, no. 2 (2000): 187; Olly Gruner, ‘Good Business, Good Policy, Good Patriotism: The British Film Weeks of 1924’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 32, no. 1 (2012): 41–56.
16 Smither and Walsh, ‘Unknown Pioneer’, 187.
17 TNA WORK 19/554: Edward Foxen Cooper to E. H. Bright, 4 September 1923.
18 Gruner, ‘Good Business, Good Policy, Good Patriotism’, 41.
19 TNA WORK 19/554: ‘G.H.B.’ to Foxen Cooper, 4 September–6 September 1923.
20 Ibid.
21 See Higson, Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
22 TNA WORK 19/1129: George Crichton to Lionel Earle, 23 June 1925.
23 Ibid: Earle to Crichton, 1 July 1925.
24 TNA T 162/511: M. Connolly to F. H. Slingsby, 10 November 1926.
25 Daily Mail, 1 August, 1925: 12.
26 ‘The Week’s Short Stuff: Haunted Houses and Castles’, Kinematograph Weekly, 7 January 1926: 68.
27 S. R. Littlewood, ‘The Art of the Cinema’, The Sphere, 24 April 1926: xiv.
28 TNA T 162/511: Slingsby to Connolly, 23 October 1926.
29 Ibid.: Connolly to Slingsby, 10 November 1926.
30 Margaret Dickinson and Sarah Street, Cinema and State: The Film Industry and the British Government 1927–84 (London: British Film Institute, 1985), 1.
31 Jeffrey Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in Britain 1930–1939 (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1984), 35.
32 Ibid: 63–4.
33 Ibid: 31.
34 Parliamentary Debates: House of Commons, 5th Series Vol.203, 16 March 1927, col. 2059.
35 TNA WORK 19/1129: Winifred Cory to Rowland Thomas Baring, 8 November 1930.
36 Ibid: Baring to Earle, 12 November 1930.
37 Ibid: Earle to Baring, 25 November 1930.
38 ‘Palace Lent for Film: King’s Interest in Industry’, Dundee Evening Telegraph, 6 March 1931: 4.
39 Stephen Tallents, The Projection of England (London: Faber & Faber, 1932).
40 Ibid., 39.
41 Ibid., 14–15. Emphasis in original.
42 Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace, 252.
43 Greg Walker, The Private Life of Henry VIII (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003), 3.
44 TNA WORK 19/1129: David Cunynghame to the Office of Works, 8 May 1933.
45 Ibid: Comptroller, Lord Chamberlain’s Office to the Office of Works, 25 May 1933.
46 Ibid: Memorandum, E. H. Donohue, 26 May 1933.
47 Ibid: Memorandum, Donahue, 31 May 1933.
48 Ibid: Sir Samuel Hoare to Sir William Ormsby Gore, 29 May 1933.
49 Ibid: Ormsby Gore to Hoare, 30 May 1933.
50 Ibid: Sir Clive Wigram to Sir Patrick Duff, 8 June 1933.
51 Ibid: Duff to Wigram, 14 June 1933.
52 Ibid: Wigram to Duff, 15 June 1933.
53 C. A. Lejeune, ‘The Private Life of Henry VIII’, Observer, 29 October 1933.
54 James Chapman offers further analysis of the success of The Private Life of Henry VIII within the broader context of the British film industry of the early 1930s in Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2005). Further details of the production history and reception for the film can be found in: Charles Drazin, Korda: Britain’s Only Movie Mogul (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2000); Sue Harper, Picturing the Past: The Rise and Fall of the British Costume Film (London: British Film Institute, 1994) and Sarah Street, Transatlantic Crossings: British Feature Films in the USA (London: Bloomsbury, 2002).
55 TNA WORK 19/1169: Donahue to G.A. Titman, 7 August 1947.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., Titman to Donahue, 8 August 1947.
58 TNA BT 64/4493: Overhead costs and earnings of British films, 1950.
59 David Niven, ‘David Niven’s Own Story: Of His Life and Loves’, Australian Women’s Weekly, 15 September 1971: 15.
60 TNA WORK 19/1169: P.L. Long to Secretary, Ministry of Works, 14 August 1947.
61 Ibid.: Donahue to Long, 19 August 1947.
62 Ibid.: Donahue to Long, 20 August 1947.
63 Ibid.: Alex Strasser to Titman, 25 August 1947.
64 Ibid.: Donahue to Strasser, 29 August 1947.
65 Ibid: Ernest Betts to Donahue, 14 September 1949.
66 Ibid: Donahue to Titman, 7 October 1949.
67 Ibid: Titman to Donahue, 10 October 1949.
68 TNA WORK 14/3246: Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Eric Penn to various, 25 June 1980. Emphasis in original.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 TNA WORK: 19/1129: Duff to Crichton, 28 March 1933.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Llewella Chapman
Llewella Chapman is a visiting scholar at the University of East Anglia. Her research interests include British cinema and television history, the UK heritage and museum sector, costume and gender. She is the author of Fashioning James Bond: Costume, Gender and Identity in the World of 007 (Bloomsbury, 2022) and From Russia With Love (BFI/Bloomsbury, 2022), published as part of the BFI Film Classics series. She is contracted to write her next monograph, Costume and British Cinema: Labour, Agency and Creativity, 1900–1985, to be published in 2026.