Thanks to Richard Grantham for sharing these artist’s impressions of BBC Pebble Mill. They belonged to his late father, John Grantham. I’m told that John was in charge of the move to BBC Pebble Mill in 1971, from the other BBC buildings around Birmingham (Broad Street, Gosta Green, Carpenter Road).
The Newcomers circa 1967
The Newcomers with some names
The Newcomers was a drama series produced at Gosta Green, in Birmingham, in the 1960s. It was originally shot in black and white, but moved to colour with the OB scanner as a drive in outside the studio providing the colour facilities.
The following people have been identified:
Bill Sellars producer, Wendy Richard actor, Jeremy Bullock Actor, Maggie Fitzgibbon acton. Islwyn Evans floor manager, Michael Bowen production assistant, Paul Kerr floor staff, Pauline Pearson nee Dodds producers assistant, Bunny Hall duplicating, Michael Edwards design, Miles Lang, designer, Alan Farrington, Wally Aspey scenic, Fred Foster props, Jim Lloyds props, Sid Wright, Ann Brown now Doling costume, Joyce Hawkins costume designer,
On right, next to Jacky in striped dress, actress Mitzi Rogers who married John Davies, Director. Between Gerald Cross and Alan Browning is Naomi Chance, actress, Left of Barry Letts is Rita Dunn. Behind Rita, Ann Brown now Ann Doling, dresser, who is somehow named Helen Cotterill, who was not even in the cast. Behind Rita is I think Bob Hubbard, camera.
Gosta Green Studio. Photography by Roger Davis, no reproduction without permission.
I am anxious for this not to be a paean of self-praise, but a celebration of achievement by all Staff who worked at Gosta Green Studio Birmingham, prior to the opening of Pebble Mill, so…
This is my much-abbreviated personal History of Gosta Green Studio, Midland Region, 1958-71.
The studio, a former cinema, opened in 1955, being situated two bus-rides away from the administrative centre at Carpenter Road.
I joined in December 1958 as Wardrobe Supervisor and sole member of the Costume Department. I had a small room with sink, an industrial sewing machine, a telephone and a cupboard containing a box of assorted aprons, a coat circa 1930 and just one Elizabethan sleeve.
The Make-up area had only one member in residence, Neva Bunford, but the two set Designers, Margaret Peacock and Charles Carroll were based at Carpenter Road.
Network Dramas were already in production under the guidance of Peter Dews and during my 13 years there we transmitted 64 single plays and remain justly proud of the reputation given us by renowned critic Kenneth Tynan, who said: “The Mecca of Television Drama is in the Midlands”, (our London colleagues never quite forgave us).
In addition to single plays, both period and contemporary, we made four serials, eight series of differing lengths and five twice-weekly ‘soaps’ all black and white and live.
Rehearsal rooms, Directors, Actors and Costumiers all being centred in London, I spent many hours on trains reading and working on scripts, which on arrival at Paddington would be deposited in a left-luggage locker to save my carrying them around. The I.R.A. then put a stop to this as their activities caused the lockers to be closed for security reasons. On three separate occasions in the early seventies I happened to be very close to their explosions while working with Ian Carmichael on the Peter Wimsey series. One was at St James’ Palace close to Lockes Hatters, where we had been fitting just before.
I attended rehearsals, met actors for fittings at Costumiers, took actors shopping and carried all my purchases back to Brum. (London Designers enjoyed a follow-up system to collect and carry their goods to TVC…). This became a weekly routine during the “Soaps”. On the return journey I read the following week’s scripts.
Our network output was not solely confined either to drama or to the studio, and recalling it all now I am amazed at the variety of programmes we transmitted. Being responsible for both regional and London productions whenever they came into the Midland area, I travelled widely, to Cosford and Bridgnorth RAF stations for the Charlie Chester Shows, somewhere into the countryside for Children’s Caravan, to Nottingham Ice Rink for Cool Spot and Hot Ice and Nottingham Theatre for Treasure Island, Leeds Playhouse for Barney Colehan’s Palace of Varieties and spent a week each year in Great Yarmouth for End of Pier Shows. Another annual event, nearer base in Birmingham, was Barrie Edgar’s Chipperfields Circus. I provided costume for Beaulieu Motor Museum, including an early policewoman’s uniform which I was obliged to wear myself when the artiste failed to arrive, and a docudrama on the history of Westminster Abbey.
Back at Gosta Green studio a series of six Beverley Sisters shows recorded in one week needed alterations to each of the twenty-one dresses they provided to wear per day. I worked until midnight with no assistance. When at last I was able to employ occasional freelance help, I was grateful for talented girls from the Handsworth School of Dress Design. After this early start several of them continued their careers in Costume and became TV Designers. Male dressers were sent on request from London for several years until I was granted an in-house secretary and three permanent wardrobe staff in 1964. Before this all paperwork, orders, invoices etc went from Carpenter Road.
We regional Designers occasionally stood in for one another, so I went to Cardiff when Mary Husband was unavailable, and Joan Wakefield came from Bristol to cover for my two maternity leaves.
On Christmas Eve 1961 I gave birth to my son, Stephen and became a rare member of Staff. The BBC did not have many working mothers in those days! In 1965 Stephen’s sister, Caroline arrived. This latter occasion was during the run of The Flying Swan, with film star Margaret Lockwood, a charming and very professional lady who took delight in speculating on the sex of my expected baby. She was good fun and a pleasure to work with. Another set designer, Michael Edwards, came at this time, but no costume designer joined me until Pebble Mill.
We were kept busy with the many musical programmes, classical and pop. We had the Midland Light Orchestra whose grey jackets were my responsibility, as were the choristers’ surplices for Xmas Carols from Kings College Cambridge, dipped to the requisite mixture of Elephant Grey and beige after laundering, pure white being unacceptable in those days.
There were regional opt-outs, magazine programmes with items of local interest and news, and all this was scheduled to fit in between the dramas. I believe Pot Black and Top Gear originated with us, Percy Thrower’s Gardeners’ World came from a tiny little area outside. Eileen Fowler had her team of housewives appearing in a programme called Keep Fit.
My first drama production in Birmingham was Pinero’s The Magistrate on December 20th 1958 followed by So Many Children on December 27th.I had costumed these during my probationary period in London. In January we transmitted the six-part series The Nightwatchman. Next Peter Dews directed the six-part serial Hilda Lessways, starring Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins. My costume designs being made at costumiers in London, we relied on them and British Rail to deliver on time and in finished condition, but …as Judi entered the studio her elaborate cascading bustle fell to the floor in a heap of satin and lace….as the direction “standby studio” rang out, I was on my knees frantically pinning it back up. Judi remained calm and I spent the scene huddled behind a sofa on set.
November 1959 saw us filming on War Office territory in Thetford for The Case of Private Hamp, the story of an execution for cowardice in WWI. This necessitated the use of army cadets from a public school as extras. The bleak and cold conditions were exacerbated by firemen using their hoses so the boys showed initiative by making a fire from wreckage timber to dry their sodden uniforms. Called for action, they rushed out in a cloud of steam. The khaki dye made pretty patterns through their string vests!
In 1961 came Spycatcher, a series based on the wartime experiences of Lieutenant Colonel Pinto and then fourteen single plays, including Waiting for Godot and She Stoops to Conquer, in which Derek Jacobi made his first TV appearance, playing Marlow, a character with a stammer. He told me later that his aunt thought this due to his nervousness but that she understood better before he played Claudius! Part of a costume designer’s job I discovered, is to calm and reassure artists making their first appearance before the cameras. Amongst these I remember Vladimir Ashkenazy before he gave a superb virtuoso performance in one of our classical concerts. Nervousness also overcame the actors in The Newcomers, one of our twice-weeklies, when we went into tele-recording. They thought all their little hesitations and fluffs would be shown over and over again and not edited out!
I enjoyed designing period costumes, and there were many opportunities, including the interesting serial Alexander Graham Bell starring Alex MacCowan and Francesca Annis, but we were soon to be plunged into the era of ‘kitchen sink’. At Gosta we were pioneers of innovative stories, being the first in 1967 to examine the lives and problems facing our immigrant population with a play, The Dark Man, starring Earl Cameron and a series Rainbow City featuring Gemma Jones and Errol John in a mixed-race marriage. These were location film and studio, followed by the twice-weekly footballers’ United, Newcomers, Swizzlewick, The Doctors and Owen MD. These last two caused very long hours for Costume folk. Finishing in studio at 10pm, we packed costumes, travelled the thirty miles to Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds, unpacked and were ready to start filming at 5am, every week! I escaped this routine twice, leaving the series in the capable hands of my assistant, Ann Brown, and went with Bernard Hepton to Cambridge for The Life of A. E. Houseman, and with Freddie Jones for David Jones’ Omnibus series, John Clare – I Am. This latter filming had the unit involved in an actual murder in Epping Forest!
We can also claim to have been an irritant for Mary Whitehouse’s campaign … although undeservedly, with an innocent and very funny scene in Swizzlewick, one of our soaps.
The studio was sometimes used as a try-out, and after the success of a pilot episode, we were disappointed that the subsequent production would go to London. We found however, that once artistes discovered the journey to Birmingham ended in the friendly intimate atmosphere of our small studio and staff, they were pleased to return. Michael Caine came twice, and Thora Hird more than once, the first time reducing those of us in the gallery to tears by the pathos of her character. I can also claim to have recognised star quality in a performance of Michael’s with Sheila Burrell in Jonny Speight’s drama, Playmates. On no other occasion watching from the gallery have I felt I was intruding into the privacy of others. A brilliant script and extraordinary performances from them both!
This is only a brief account of the output from Gosta Green Studio, which should not be allowed to pass without due recognition. I have correlated it all from my person notebooks, diaries and BBC copyright photographs and believe it to be an accurate and honest account.
I could not have enjoyed being a working mother without the support of my husband, Robert, and the understanding and encouragement of senior staff at Carpenter Road.
My colleagues at Gosta Green were without exception friendly and cooperative. Together we were a great team, taking pride in our work, sharing and helping to alleviate problems and rejoicing together at our successes; a splendid example of collaboration between all skills. Sadly, we left this small studio for the larger ones at Pebble Mill …
Addendum:
The greatly anticipated day duly arrived when the first sod was to be cut for our new home at Pebble Mill.
I had already discovered that my wardrobe would be in ‘Phase 2’ of the development, and “temporarily” was in the basement with no access to natural daylight. I later found out that the small ‘drip-dry’ area had an electric point at floor level! My office, to share with Make-Up, was several floors distant and had no telephone….
Back to the grand opening. It rained. All staff assembled, for Gosta, Carpenter Road and Broad Street news studio (which was situated above a car showroom in central Birmingham). Charles Curran, Director General, was due to arrive at this wet marquee where an oblong space had been cut in the carpet (!), to allow him access to the turf to be cut with an purpose-made long-handled silver spade. Minutes before his expected arrival someone decided that the exposed strip of muddy grass did not look green, so Design Department was called upon to rectify this with a spray-can of green paint.
Just in time…before the DG arrived to tell us how proud he was to be “Opening these new premises for the BBC. The only building in Europe to be built containing both Radio and Television Studios here in MANCHESTER …..”
Perhaps prescient: Pebble Mill has returned to the turf….Gosta Green Studio building remains, an annexe to Aston University.
Joyce Hawkins
Senior Costume Designer Head of Department (retired)
Gwen Arthy smartening Brian Glover up on ‘Shakespeare or Bust’. Photo by Graham Pettifer, no reproduction without permission
This obituary for Gwen Arthy, by Carol Churchill was published in The Guardian 15 July 2021. Here is the link to the article: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/15/gwen-arthy-obituary?fbclid=IwAR0ps6b0vYMCqicmXcM5XFsZH3wQwyUkMuUr6SkrKtv2T7rErr68WLWmWfc
My former boss, Gwen Arthy, who has died aged 94, was head of makeup at BBC Pebble Mill from 1971 until 1985.
Gwen was born in Rochford, Essex, where her father was a baker.
She studied at the Central School of Art and Design in London, later to become Central St Martins. Her first employment was with a troupe of puppeteers, among whom was a young Ronnie Barker. She then moved to the costume-makers Angels, suppliers to film, theatre and TV, where one of her first tasks was to sculpt a nose for the baritone Tito Gobbi to wear in Tosca.
Gwen joined the BBC in London in 1964 to train as a makeup artist, before moving to the BBC studios at Gosta Green in Birmingham and then to the brand new Pebble Mill in 1971, where she became head of makeup. Programmes for which she designed makeup included Shakespeare or Bust (1970), The Brothers (1972), Nuts in May (1976) and Great Expectations (1981). When we worked on Who Pays the Ferryman? (1977), Gwen and I, as her assistant, were required to go to Crete for three months, where we shared many laughs, evenings in tavernas and midnight swims. As a result we became good friends
In 1985 she took early retirement and returned to her roots in Essex, settling in Leigh-on-Sea, where she found a lively artistic community in which she soon became involved. Over the years she became a prolific painter, in many different styles, and as well as having her own show her work was hung in many exhibitions, including the summer exhibition at the Royal Academy.
When ill health made her housebound she missed her art classes and her ability to put paint on canvas more than anything. Her interest in colour, form and texture was an integral part of her life. While she had still been able, she had travelled to many places to paint, in the UK and abroad, but her favourite, to which she returned many times, was the Isles of Scilly.
Gwen’s son, Tim, was given up for adoption in the early 1960s, but happily, in 2005, they were reunited and Gwen got to know her granddaughter, Amber.
While Gwen could be a demanding boss, she was very supportive of her staff and loved spending convivial evenings, and occasional lunchtimes, with them in the BBC Club, doing their best to empty the bar of its stock of Gordon’s gin. Gwen loved her home and garden and always had a cat, the last of whom was called Biscuit.
Carol Churchill
Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission
Dear Octopus was transmitted on BBC television on 10th January 1960. It was produced at Gosta Green in Birmingham. The drama is set at a reunion of the Randoph family.
Joyce Hawkins worked on the costumes for the drama. Thanks to her for sharing this publicity photograph of Michael Denison, from the production.
Chloe Gibson was the director, and the play was written by Dodie Smith.
Michael Denison played Nicholas Randolph and Gwen Ffrangcon Davies played Dora Randolph.
The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:
Colin Pierpoint: I think I do remember it. Each of the characters was a bit weird in some way or other. Now I think of it the son ends up behaving like a baby at the end, with the parents encouraged by this, even though he is about 40. It was so way out, I thought it worthy of a Pebble Mill drama!’
Mary Sanchez: ‘I worked with Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray on Howard’s Way too- lovely almost regal like couple! They didn’t mind being driven around locations in my massive mini bus and were always very appreciative!! Climbing in and out …They invited me to their house in Amersham for tea, I never did go but they were very sweet indeed!’
Jane Green: ‘Ah! Michael was married to Dulcie Gray who played Kate Harvey in Howards Way. When we were filming near Southampton they gave me a lift back to my hotel in their car – which he proudly told me he’d bought off Princess Diana’s dad.(Dulcie was friends with the Queen Mum and used to go to Clarence House a lot for tea) The Denisons were a lovely, giggly, fun couple. Photo is of AFM Alison Symington and me on location standing infront of ‘Jan Howard’s’ car. About 1986.’
