Location Scouting St Mary’s Church, Fleet Marston
Scouting locations – basically, finding outdoor settings to film in – is generally one of my favourite parts of pre-production, but this one tested my mettle somewhat. Having consulted the mighty Google to find some deserted, abandoned or just generally run-down and spooky places to film in, I donned my trusty walking boots and headed out into our strange May weather with the usual tingling of excitement.
My first port of call was to be the redundant St Mary’s church in the deserted medieval village of Fleet Marston, Buckinghamshire. Now, there are a couple of terms I’d like to run through here. The first is “redundant”, which doesn’t mean that the church has been completely abandoned, only that it is no longer used as a place of worship. It remains a consecrated building that is maintained by the Churches Conservation Trust and can be used for all sorts of other purposes including, yes, you’ve guessed it, filming.
The second term is “deserted medieval village”, abbreviated very Americanly as “DMV”. Sadly, I have to report that you should pretty much forget any romantic notions that the term may conjure up of Indiana Jones-esque ruins entwined with vines as most of them are barely even visible nowadays. In certain places the buildings of greater standing, such as the church or manor house, are either still standing or have been maintained, but the homes of the laity have almost all completely disappeared, as is the case with Fleet Marston. Another slightly confusing thing is that Fleet Marston still exists as a place, although these days it has a population of roughly 47 and is more associated with the controversial HS2 rail link.
Anyway, not to be deterred by the weather and not really knowing where I was heading, I struck out, like some Corsa-driving Shackleton. Once I had found somewhere to park, I realised that for the entire half-hour journey my phone had been running the sat nav without me plugging in the charger, so now I was down to a measly 15% battery. Still, the sun was out, the paths were plentiful and the countryside very pretty. After all, how hard could it possibly be to find a church in a fairly flat expanse 2.5 miles long and 0.75 miles wide…?
As it turns out, pretty hard. Even with my choking sat nav saying that I was just 50 metres from it, I couldn’t see any sign of the wretched church, and by now the weather was on the turn. Huge black storm clouds were blowing in from all around, whipped up by an icy wind. I quickened my step a little and peered through a high and extremely forbidding fence bordering the A41.
Success…! There she was, peeking out of the gloom. I almost did a merry jig, but my joy was curtailed by a fat hailstone hitting me right in the eye.
The question now was how to actually get there. As you can see from the photo, the church is seemingly marooned in the middle of a ploughed field, and we all know they’re the British equivalent of a minefield, only slightly more dangerous. I set off in search of a stile and footpath.
In, as it turns out, completely the wrong direction. I finally found what appeared to be a legitimate gateway into the field, but by now I was further than ever away.
Despondency began to set in as the hail got heavier. Still, I reasoned, the church is obviously maintained, so there must be a proper way of getting to it. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time imagining that an august-sounding organisation like the Churches Conservation Trust would go clod-hopping across a field while dodging a hail of shotgun pellets just to Brasso the candelabra, but it’s an interesting image if you can’t sleep one night.
Having bimbled my way back up the A41 I came across a business. World exclusive here, folks: if you want access to St Mary’s church in Fleet Marston, just ask one of the operatives of International Slate Supplies, Buy Roof Slate or PJ Labour, and they’ll happily let you walk straight through the yard to where a strip of preserved grass leads you right up to the church.
And that was it…! Even the sun came out to warm my juddering bones as I approached my hallowed goal.
It was at this point that my traumatised phone battery decided to finally give up the ghost and cark it, but at least I managed to fire off these two shots for the director. I’m hoping to get back out there later in the year and take more photos using one of my Canons, all the while praying for better weather.
And that, dear reader, should be it – except that it isn’t. When I walked back down the grass strip I found that the yard had been locked up, so I braved the shotgun pellets and skirted around the field until I found my previous entry point and then it was back to Kenny Corsa and pizza for tea.
I don’t know, eh…? The things we do for film.
Copyright © 2021 Chris Nelthorpe/Gasworks Films Ltd