Carolyn Davies – Page 2 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Colin Pierpoint blog 10 – Pebble Mill

Pebble Mill building circa 1970, copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission

I was one of the first people to work in Pebble Mill Studios, because all the Midland sound editing facilities were in mono at the time, and some orchestral concerts were being recorded at OBs in stereo. In fact, the Producers like Richard Butt, had to travel to London to edit their programmes. I did try to tell the management that there were stereo editing channels at Wood Norton, a lot closer, but I don’t think they understood. (These days, Wood Norton would have jumped at the chance to charge for hiring out editing facilities, but this was before Total Costing, Producer Choice, and department Business Units. Not that I am saying these were necessarily a good thing). So, when the Pebble Mill building was nearing completion, we were allowed to use the cubicle of Studio 1 for tape editing.

To be fair, I must mention another of my disasters. I was using the new Studer tape machines in Studio 1, B62 I think. I had previously used the Studer C37 at Wood Norton on attachment as an Assistant Lecturer, but I was caught out by a feature of the new machine where the wind will inch back and too, but will lock on if you have pressed the stop button beforehand. Anyway, I mangled a tape of an orchestra. The producer, Ron Gardener kindly allowed me to keep the reel while I sorted it out. In fact I had everything except one chord of music, and I built that from copying other bits of the performance and editing them together. A few days later, I played this to Ron, who said that he would have accepted that, but he had since found that Alan Ward, the Studio Manager who recorded it, had a 7 and a half ips copy recorded at the time of the performance. So we used that just for one phrase, about a bar of music. Ron Gardener then very kindly said that I had done good work for him in the past and he was prepared to overlook it. Nice of him to say that, and the only tape I ever damaged, but I did let myself down.

Colin Pierpoint

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Carolyn Davies: “Colin, was this why future trainee Audio Assistants had to editing in a missing phrase of music as part of their 1/4″ editing training at Wood Norton?? Great story…”

Andy Freeth: “lan Ward’s OB stores equipment list was always “one and a spare!” Hardly surprising that there was another recording ferreted away Colin!”

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Sophia and Constance request

Photo by Neil Wigley, no reproduction without permission

I received the request below from Stephen Corcoran:

“In the April of 1988, a BBC TV drama serial was shown on BBC2 called Sophia and Constance. It was an adaption of Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale. It was filmed here in the Pebble Mill studios. I enjoyed the serial very much. It has never been shown again or released on DVD. Most people have forgotten about it. I strongly feel – that serial was very underrated and didn’t receive the attention it should done by the pubic. It was a brilliantly made classic serial by team at Pebble Mill. Well acted and filmed. Very good period details with lovely costumes too. A lot of work had go into at the time. I’m going to write to the BBC, to ask them if I could get hold of a copy of the serial on DVD. I would be willing to pay cost however much it costs. It would be like a dream come true, to see again this fine classical serial. Does anyone here have any suggestions of how to go about getting hold of a copy? Or perhaps someone has their own personal copy? Suggestions would be very much appreciated. Thank you.”

Stephen Corcoran

Here is the Radio Times entry for the first episode of the serial, courtesy of the BBC Genome project http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/67c54cef8e894232970de9ce3dec6641 . I love the fact that the elephant gets a credit:

“written by JOHN HARVEY based on The Old Wives’ Tale by ARNOLD BENNETT The first of six parts with Patricia Routledge and Alfred Burke
Headstrong and proud,
Sophia struggles against the wishes of her family while her sister Constance – quiet, but no less passionate – accepts a future in the family draper’s shop. Then, when the Wakes Week festivities are at their height, Sophia’s impetuous and romantic nature leads to tradegy.
Arnold Bennett ‘s greatest novel spans 50 years, from the middle of the 19th century to the first decade of the 20th. The story ranges from the Potteries town of Bursley to Paris, as the contrasting lives of the two sisters unfold.
Music GEOFFREY BURGON
Script editor SIMON PASSMORE
Executive producer COUN ROGERS Producer JOHN HARRIS Directed by ROMEY ALLISON , HUGH DAVID

Contributors

Written By: John Harvey
Unknown: Arnold Bennett
Unknown: Patricia Routledge
Unknown: Alfred Burke
Unknown: Arnold Bennett
Music: Geoffrey Burgon
Editor: Simon Passmore
Producer: John Harris
Directed By: Romey Allison
Directed By: Hugh David
Samuel Povey: Nigel Bradshaw
Constance: Catherine Cusack
Sophia: Melissa Greenwood
Mrs Barnes: Patricia Routledge
Maria Insull: Freda Dowie
Mr Critchlow: Alfred Burke
Mr Baines: John Scott Martin
Maggie: Penny Lea Therbarrow
Dr Harrop: Jon Croft
Gerald Scales: Leonard Preston
Elephant: Rani”

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Marie Phillips: ‘I remember the painting of this series which hung in the corridor at Pebble Mill. I always stopped to look at it and find something new. Actually, I would have loved to have had that painting. Anyone remember it and know what happened to it. I do hope it didn’t get binned. The series was truly one of the BBC’s best and another triumph for Pebble Mill.’

Carolyn Davies: ‘It was in production in Studio A the day I joined Pebble Mill. I have a very strong memory of walking past the studio tx lights, not quite believing I was actually going to be working there….’

Kevin Lakin: ‘I worked on this, a lot of the exteriors were shot at the Black Country Living Museum, we were there for about 3 weeks.’

Richard Stevenson: ‘One of my first dramas as a trainee. I believe Phil Wilson was camera supervisor with Alan Duxbury and Robin Sunderland on the crew and probably Mark Scott.’

Move to the Mailbox

The article from the Birmingham Post circa 2002, explains how the move from Pebble Mill to the Mailbox was going to be a positive one, enabling technology and the studios to be improved. The move from the ‘leafy suburb’ of Edgbaston would apparently make BBC Birmingham more in touch with its audience!

Unfortunately these aims were not realised, and the move proved to be symptomatic of the decline of BBC Birmingham.

Thanks to Stuart Gandy to sharing this cutting.

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Andy Marriott: ‘Unfortunately pretty much every move is a downsizing event, and it’s not just the BBC. I’ve been helping a friend out with a project at the old Granada site in Manchester and it’s depressing to see the facilities that existed there that they simply don’t have at their new site.’

Jean Palmer: ‘I’m sure that those who worked there could have told them it wouldn’t work. Shame we lost Pebble Mill’

Carolyn Davies: ‘All very sad….BBC Wales about to relocate….hope the same doesn’t happen…..’

Sue Farr: ‘I always suspected that London was jealous of Brimingham’s success and that was what was behind the decisions that were made. None of us believed any of it was going to benefit the Midlands, did we?’

Andrew Langstone: ‘Seems The Mailbox is the BBC’S dumping ground for things it doesn’t know where to put them.’

Heads of Pebble Mill

There were six heads of Pebble Mill during the building’s lifetime, although some were Heads of Network TV, rather than Head of Building. Their tenure seems to get progressively shorter. This information was taken from the BBC Written Archives in Caversham. They were:

Phil Sidey – 1972-82 Head of Building

David Waine – 1983-1992 Head of Building

Rod Natkiel – 1992-1998 Head of Network Television

Kate Marsh – 1998-2001

Paresh Solanki – 2001-2002

Tessa Finch – 2002- end of Pebble Mill

Phil Sidey (right). Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission

David Waine. Copyright resides with the original holder no reproduction without permission

Rod Natkiel. Copyright resides with the original holder

Paresh Solanki. Copyright resides with the original holder

Kate Marsh. Copyright resides with the original holder

Tessa Finch. Copyright resides with the original holder

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Lynne Cullimore: “My favourite is – Phil Sidey who put Pebble Mill on the map! and I liked David Waine who was a very nice man.”

Jane Upston: “I was there during David Waine’s tenure and part of Rod Natkiel’s. I worked in HR (was Jane Morgan then). The people I remember most though were Colin Adams and Jock Gallagher.”

Chris Marshall: “Agreed, David Waine was great to work for. Is that really Rod Natkiel? As for Kate Marsh…”

Carolyn Davies: “David Waine was one of the best ‘heads of’ anything I have ever met. Once you’d met him he always remembered your name and what you did and made a big effort to see those on the shop floor…..”

Dharmesh Rajput: “Wow – I thought there would be more… I started working in TV just end of 1998 whilst still working in radio and having done some work experience in Press & Publicity with Donald Steel’s team – so I remember Rod Natkiel from having to take press cuttings to his office. And then I was in TV and Online till the move to The Mailbox.”

Jane Ward: “Agree with Carolyn… David Waine was a great People Person…”

Viv Ellis: “I agree David Waine rocked. Lovely boss”

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Sam Coley interviews Ben Peissel

Benedict Peissel is a Dubbing Mixer who specialises in post production audio for television across a wide range of genres (Factual, Drama, Animation & Documentary).
Between January 1985 – 1994 he was an Audio Assistant at BBC Pebble Mill and then from 1994 – 1996 he progressed to the position of Audio Supervisor and from 1996 to the present day as Dubbing Mixer (latterly as a freelancer).

In the following transcription, he looks back on his time at Pebble Mill and how it prepared him for a career in audio production…

(Sam Coley – Birmingham City University)

Ben Peissel, with mixer. Photo by Sam Coley, no reproduction without permission

Ben Peissel, with mixing desk. Photo by Sam Coley, no reproduction without permission

“I started at the BBC 30 years ago as a trainee audio assistant completing a three year apprenticeship. During that time, I worked in radio and television studios, radio and television outside broadcasts, location sound recording and TV post production. So, wherever there was a need for sound in a production, as a trainee, I would work on it – and that gave me a fantastic grounding to appreciate sound in all its diverse wonders!”

“Pebble Mill in Birmingham was pretty much unique amongst all the BBC bases, in that the Audio department serviced both radio and TV, whereas in most other parts of the BBC you were compartmentalised into television, radio, location or OBs. That notion of being tied to one element, whether it was radio or TV, seemed far too restrictive. At Pebble Mill the idea was that if you worked across all of the craft areas, your spread of experience meant you could be more flexibly deployed.”

“Some people would say you ended up as a ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’! I actually think the opposite, it was handled very well in the sense that, at a junior level you ended up with a really good grounding across all the genres, but as you progressed, you might start to specialise in two or three areas. In my case, TV and radio outside broadcasts and post production sound, became my forte. For other people, perhaps they would specialise purely in radio drama work, or documentary work, or light entertainment TV work. There was enough scope for people to have specialisms, but also, if the need arose, to jump in and still do the basics, like clip a microphone, on somebody.”

“I think I was very fortunate to have landed up in a job like that, in a culture that fostered innovation and collaboration across the board. Pebble Mill, the people and the place, thrived on the cross-fertilisation between radio and TV, and vice versa – and in fact neither radio or TV was seen as better than the other, they were just seen as interlocking parts of a bigger jigsaw puzzle.

(Benedict Peissel – Dubbing Mixer)

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Carolyn Davies: ‘I’m proud to have been a member of Pebble Mill’s Audio Unit, best training ground and best variety of work in the country…..sentiments echoed completely here…hope you are well Ben!’

Pete Simpkin: ‘I agree that the wider the early experience the better the basic training. I was lucky in the 1960s to be a member of one of the early ‘sub-region’ units…we were the original multi-taskers. We were engineers by definition but handled all aspects of audio and video from studio camera ops to OBs, area VHF news broadcasts, telecine to audio mixing,film processing and at the start even changing the toilet rolls in the loos! Didn’t get far with the last one there but I enjoyed every minute and with all the knowledge was able to transfer eventually to Local Radio Production where the multi tasking went on!’