At Beckfoot: The Amazon’s garden and boat house ~
The Amazon’s time had come. In the script, the short scene where Nancy and Peggy careen their dinghy is set in the Amazon boathouse, but Claude Whatham shot them scrubbing the underside of their dinghy on the lakeside with Beckfoot behind. Nancy threw a bucket of water over him for his pains. It was a complete accident. She actually chucked the water onto the bottom of the boat but it splashed back. He was squatting below the camera to the bottom right and got well and truly soaked by what must have been very cold, lake water. Kit Seymour roared with laughter and he took in it good spirit but only up to a point. I don’t think he had anything else to wear.
I was a conscientious child and keen not to fall behind with my school work. Children under the age of sixteen have to be issued with a licence by their local education authority before they can act in films. Mum, who was our legal chaperone, decided it would be quite fine if we did fifteen schooling hours a week rather than a minimum of three hours a day, as stipulated in the rule book. I spent the day catching up in our school bus.
Mum was equally fluid about the time we spent on set – or indeed on location. Sten Grendon, who played Roger, was aged nine. I now know he was meant to go home every day at 4.30pm but we all returned together whenever it was deemed practical. But his mother, Jane, was with him and if ever there was a child who needed to expend energy it was Sten. Sending him back to the Oaklands Guest House early could have endangered the people of Ambleside. It did us a lot of good to work hard, and cope with real, if channelled, responsibility.
We were all busting with energy, so much that I grazed my leg badly climbing a tree at lunch time that day. Claude put a stop to any more tree climbing as a result. He couldn’t risk any of us getting injured. My sister Tamzin Neville broke her ankle when she was in the middle of playing Anthea, the leading role in a BBC serialisation of E.Nesbit’s The Phoenix and the Carpet. It could have been a disaster but she wore long Edwardian dresses with petticoats that covered up her splint. My legs were fully on display in Swallows and Amazons. If I hadn’t have been wearing dungarees when I climbed that tree the world would have seen the scratch.
I can remember admiring the large house featured as Beckfoot, the Blackett’s house on the lakeside, and wandering past towering the rhododendrons in the garden, but I have no idea where is is. Christina Hardyment felt that Arthur Ransome must have modelled Beckfoot on Lanehead, the Collingwoods’ house on the East of Lake road above Coniston, but the film required a big house with lawns going down to a lake. John Ward has written in to say that we used Brown Howe House on the western Shore of Coniston Water south of Peel Island. The boathouse is also there on the edge of the lake.
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I have just found an article in The Times which includes an extract from Kit Seymour’s diary:
‘This is the day I had been waiting for. The Amazons had at last begun filming. We got changed and had to be made up sunburnt. We then rehearsed what to do. We did the second scene. I quite accidently threw a bucket of water at Claude. After lunch we had to film the interior of the boat house. Peggy had to say, ‘Not a breath of wind.’ This was quite funny becasue our hair was flying about everywhere. They had to film this scene quite a lot of times.’
Sophie Neville 
How Lovely, Sophie you are an Angel.XC
Thank you! It is so good of you to go to the trouble of signing in and logging on. I have just had a wonderful letter from Richard Pilbrow, the Producer, who now lives in the States. You must write with your perspective on it all. xS
The `big house` was Brown Howe House on the western shore south of Wild Cat Island
Thank you, John. Do you have a photograph by any chance?
Do you know where the location for Octapus Lagoon was? I remember going to a lily pond with very high wooded sides, which made it suitably dark.
We have also been asked where the waterfall in the film is. I will try to look through old Call Sheets. My mother can’t remember.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Octopus Lagoon is at the foot of Coniston where the River Craike runs out of the lake. If you go down the river, as we have done by canoe & dinghy, then it opens out into Octopus Lagoon. The river then narrows again as it goes south. You can probably see this on Google Earth.
The `waterfall` may be on the east side of the lake at Selside Beck which is across the water from Brown Howe. However I don`t remember the waterfall in the film and this may not be large enough.
Incidentally the Amazons boathouse was also at Brown Howe. We used to have a mooring close by so we may well have photographs – somewhere!.
More brilliant stuff! I love the idea of Kit Seymour soaking Claude Whatham, and the asides about Sten Grendon and his expendable energy! Thank you, keep it coming please, Sophie.
So glad to hear you are enjoying these initial notes on my old diaries. They were written so long ago.
I find them fascinating.
Let me know if you have any questions
Thank you, that’s very kind. I will.