James Herriot – What Was Pebble Mill?

All Memories Great and Small – part 4 Joyce Hawkins

Excerpt from “All Memories Great & Small” by Oliver Crocker

Memories from Joyce Hawkins (Senior Costume Supervisor)

‘I remember Head of Planning, Eric Holmes, asking me if my department would be able to cope with a long-running series based on the James Herriot books. Thirteen years before Pebble Mill, I was the Midland region’s only costume designer. I was based at the Gosta Green Studio, from where I designed 64 plays, 4 serials, 8 series and 5 twice-weekly “Soaps” all in and around Birmingham. All rehearsal rooms and costume suppliers are based in London, so I was well aware of the complexities posed by rehearsing in London, recording in Birmingham and filming in Yorkshire, but now I had a Staff of very talented people, so of course I told Eric “Yes”.

60 cast and crew have shared their memories for this new book, which is available to preorder now from Miwk – http://bit.ly/2d7p5ts

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Joyce Hawkins speaking at mac screening 2016

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All Creatures Great and Small – Les Podraza’s photos

Photos from Les Podraza, no reproduction without permission. Les was a scene hand on ‘All Creatures Great and Small’, which was filmed on location around Askrigg in the Yorkshire Dales, with the interiors being recorded in Pebble Mill Studio A. The series was produced by the BBC in London, but hosted out of Pebble Mill.

There were 91 episodes of ‘All Creatures’ which were transmitted between 1978 and 1990. Christopher Timothy starred as James Herriot, with Robert Hardy as Siegfried Farnon and Peter Davidson as Tristan Farnon. Carol Drinkwater played the role of Helen Herriot until Lynda Bellingham took over in 1988. The series follows the adventures of vet James Herriot in the 1930’s Yorkshire Dales, when he is working for Siegfried Farnon’s practice.

Les’s photos feature Carol Drinkwater and Christopher Timothy, as well as other members of the cast and crew. Also included are shots of the crew’s digs in Askrigg, the special effects team at work, and the camera rig on James Herriot’s car .

Les with Carol Drinkwater

‘All Creatures Great & Small’ – Make Up Artist, Maggie Thomas

Maggie Thomas Make-up Artist

The First Series Of ‘All Creatures’

Christopher Timothy, Peter Davison and Carol Drinkwater were with us all the time, since most of the storylines required them to be ready for their scenes all day. My main responsibility was Chris and Carol. How lucky was that? They soon became my dearest friends and keeping Chris’s period haircut neat was really the most make-up I needed to do for him. We were really aiming for the totally natural country look and with Carol it was a matter of controlling her beautiful natural curls into a slightly more old- fashioned look. So, apart from hats on and off and making sure that wind-blown pieces of hair were in the same place for continuity, the actual make-up job seemed pretty minimal, until we realised that every storyline had an injured animal in it and that my Designer and I would, as far as possible, be doing them!

What we didn’t know was that every animal injury in the storyline would require a lot of attention from the Make- up Department. It soon became very clear that we were going to have our work cut out to achieve some believable looking animal injuries and other problems that I will now relate to you. Another lovely job that came our way was mud – on and off at all relevant times, i.e. when an artiste slipped over in a cowshed or an animal had a sudden and unexpected movement that made the artiste get dirty. So, at the start of every day we had to mix up our bucket of artificial mud that went everywhere with us, just in case! That was not the worst thing we had to produce. Every day the script would throw up things like puss in the horse’s hoof which had us propositioning the catering wagon for a mixture of mustard and mayonnaise which we then put into the hole in the horse’s hoof that the real vet Jack Watkins had cut out in readiness and then we put some of the horny hoof bits back over it so that when Chris (Mr. Herriot) started to use the hoof implement the puss would ooze out.

Excerpt from ‘Dishing the Dirt’ by Maggie Thomas, available from Amazon, authors on line