There is currently just one cinema in the whole of Waltham Forest. It recently reopened after the chain that used to run it went bust. But 100 years ago an entire film industry was based in the area.
In the early days of the art form, between 1910 and 1930, Walthamstow’s Wood Street was home to three film studios before there were any in Hollywood. Nearly 400 films were made in E17 during the silent era.
If you think it impossible that this three-quarters-of-a-mile stretch on the edge of east London once hosted movie stars and film crews, I wouldn’t blame you. There isn’t much evidence of it.
Quite close to my home is a housing development called Picture House Mews. That has a blue plaque on it, marking the spot where the Cunard film studio, later the Broadwest, stood between 1914 and 1921. There’s another plaque further up the road where the Precision studio, founded in 1910 by the Gobbett brothers, James and David, used to be. But if you’re wanting more you need to search for it.
My own Wood Street history began in the late 1990s when I studied at the Sir George Monoux sixth form college, about 15 minutes’ walk away. We students would come down to Wood Street to buy old books and records in the indoor market. My friend Mike’s dad had a garage on Vallentin Road and I’d sometimes go there on a Friday afternoon for a smoke while Mike tinkered with an engine.
By the time I came to live in Walthamstow, I had been working in theatre for several years. One thing that drew me back was that it seemed to be a creative place with plenty going on. I don’t work in the arts anymore, though. Successive years of budget cuts made it difficult to earn a living.
I’m far from alone in this. Low pay and burnout topped a recent list of reasons why people have left the sector. And trade union BECTU has described an “existential threat” to the UK film industry, with many out of work and uncertainty taking a toll on wellbeing.
It is sad that things have come to this. I’ve come across many examples of the power of the arts to change lives. Perhaps that is why I’m so keen to find out more about the Wood Street film industry, how it shaped the geography of the area and the people who lived there, and share that story with others.
***
My search began in the British Film Institute’s Rueben Library. I had been excited to learn of a film about the highwayman Dick Turpin, made in 1913. Scenes had been filmed at the old dairy yard on Wood Street and in nearby Epping Forest, where the real life Dick Turpin had a hideout. But there is no surviving footage and the two images from the film I found in the archive show actors who seem to be standing in the garden of a stately home.
Fortunately, some other Wood Street films have survived. These can be watched in the Mediateque, the BFI’s free viewing gallery. I settled into one of the snazzy red booths and selected The Mystery of a London Flat, made at Broadwest in 1915. The film being a silent made the headphones provided somewhat redundant, although they did help drown out the gentle snoring coming from the adjacent cubicle.
The 15-minute crime caper involves a detective investigating two incidents he believes may be linked. It was quite hard to follow, although it seems that by the end both crimes have been solved and everyone lives happily ever after. What it didn’t do was provide any clues about where it was shot. The rooms it shows could have been anywhere.
My search continued at home, where I discovered that another Broadwest production is available on the website of the Imperial War Museum. The Adventures of Dick Dolan was made in 1917 in the middle of World War I and has a propaganda aspect to it. I had heard that the first part of the film was shot outdoors on Wood Street and surrounding roads, so I was eager to see if I could map its locations onto the place as it is now.
The Adventures of Dick Dolan is a morality tale that combines two plots: one about the evils of gambling; the other a story of heroism in which Dolan, a tramp, rescues a young woman whose shoe has got caught in train tracks on a level crossing. Looking at the grainy, grey footage, I’d say the crossing is at Highams Park station, one stop along the Overground Weaver line from Wood Street.
As with The Mystery of a London Flat, it was quite hard to follow the plot. The patriotic message is hardly subtle, but lot of lipreading is needed. Our hero is rewarded with a cash whip-round and invests the money in National War Savings Certificates, which he purchases in Trafalgar Square, earning him a handshake from an British bulldog.
I was struck by a phrase that appears on one of the dialogue intertitles – “Combed out”. The term was used to describe factory workers who were called up to the army, as happens to one of the characters in the film. The practice was controversial and debated in parliament. I spotted several locations I recognised and felt ready to go combing for further lost remnants of the film industry on and around Wood Street itself
***
My investigative walk began at the southern end of Wood Street, where the tree-edged plains of Hollow Ponds meet Lea Bridge Road. It’s a busy intersection hemmed with a cycle lane. At the start of the 20th century, it was the terminus of the tram line from central London. There are low-rise buildings in yellow brick on either side. On the left is Beuleigh Court, where the Precision Studio plaque is.
Next up is Picture House Mews, four red-brick storeys, where the the Cunard and Broadwest studios were. The Cunard venture lasted only a couple of years and not much remains of its legacy. More has been uncovered about Broadwest, a partnership between George Broadbridge, who later became a Conservative politician, and Walter West, a film director and impresario. There are several Broadwest films in the BFI archive along with images of the studio building, a largely glass structure reminiscent of a miniature Crystal Palace.
On the opposite side of Wood Street there is a side street of neat terraced houses called Chestnut Road North, which a UCL film lecturer has identified as the location for some of the outdoor scenes in Dick Dolan.
It’s hard to identify the exact two houses shown in the film, which would have been new at the time, due to the embellishments of UPVC and bay windows that have appeared over the years. But on the bend on the road, I found them. One has its London stock bricks cleaned to gleaming yellow and its door and windows painted trendy grey. Its neighbour is pebble-dashed.
Taking a left turn on corner, exactly as seen in the film, returns you to Wood Street. Ahead is another building shown in the film. It bore a “to let” sign when I found it, though until quite recently it was a depot for the Arla dairy company. Through the chained doors of the yard can be seen a mural of Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary film director who came from nearby Leytonstone.
Looming above the railway bridge ahead is a weird, red postmodern promontory called Northwood Tower. Just to the right as you look at it is what was the exterior of the pub that appears in Dick Dolan. It’s now an off-licence.
Walk under the railway bridge and you’re into in fully-retail part of Wood Street, with grocery shops, bakeries and craft beer stores lining the way. Just past The Duke pub, newly rebranded and painted blue with a dog dressed in red military regalia on its sign, is the setting for a scene which in the background shows a woman leaving a bakery.
I tried to work out which shop it is and what it is being used for today. I think it’s Gigi’s Dressing Room, which hires out outfits for special occasions. I wondered if Gigi knows about the Wood Street films and thought about going in to ask her, but she was busy, as ever, styling a customer.
***
A few days later, I took the short walk to Walthamstow Village to meet Barry Bliss, a locally based film-maker and a key advocate for the blue plaques on Wood Street, which went up in 2017. He’s lived in the area for decades and first learned about the Wood Street studios from the elderly mother of a neighbour who could recall the time when they were operating.
Barry discovered that it cost a shilling to watch a film at the local Picture Theatre, which a 1914 Ordnance Survey map shows had its entrance on Wood Street where the indoor market is today. If you sat behind the screen and watched it in reverse, you only paid sixpence.
He also found out that part of the appeal of Wood Street was the easy access to it by tram for the actors, who apparently travelled to the shoots wearing full film make-up – white pancake, blue lips and red eyeshadow. Quite a sight they must have been for fellow commuters.
Wood Street was also outside of the smoke zone of central London and close to green spaces. Barry told me that the studios were made of glass because, where possible, the films were shot using natural light. Early film lighting had a habit of rendering the actors temporarily blind.
The star of the Broadwest studio was Violet Hopson, a beautiful Australian woman who appears in the Dick Dolan film. She was Walter West’s lover and enjoyed riding up and down Wood Street in her yellow Roadster, no doubt drawing crowds of admirers.
Locals could be relied upon to gather when larger scenes were shot. Extras were recruited in The Duke. Someone from the production team would go into the bar and offer a shilling to anyone prepared to give up their afternoon. Children got in on the act too, bunking off school to be in a movie and being rewarded with a shilling and a hot meal.
It’s hard to know if people from the community secured more permanent jobs in the industry, given that such roles weren’t usually credited. But if they did it wouldn’t be surprising given that, as Barry says, “Walthamstow has got a tradition going back to the 18th century of people being involved in the arts”.
Barry has filmed in the area himself. “I always made it my policy, wherever I could, to have at least one scene round here so I could go home for my tea,” he says. One day, he sent the catering staff home early and taking the entire crew to the late, lamented L. Manze pie and mash shop in Walthamstow Market.
***
Eventually, the expense of filmmaking and the superior production values offered elsewhere led to the demise of Wood Street’s studios. But as I walked home from seeing Barry, I summoned to mind the flickering black-and-white figures of those films gone by: Dick Dolan in his cloth cap and Voilet Hopson bombing past The Duke in her sports car.
Who knows, if we dim the lights, we may just be able to see them again, shimmering like spectres in the window of Gigi’s Dressing Room or darting into a café where today’s Wood Street’s creatives work away, lit by the glow of their screens.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique, no-advertising and no-paywall coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support the website and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things that other people won’t. Details HERE.
