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The Making of The Owl Service

The Owl Service — Granada's first major all location, fully-scripted drama serial — was adapted in eight episodes by Cheshire author Alan Garner from his award-winning book. The story is based on a strange old Welsh legend which gradually unfolds while three teenagers — Alison, Roger and Gwyn — are on holiday in Wales.

— Granada TV 1978 press release.

— Alan Garner, Filming The Owl Service.

They took the flowers of the oak, and the flowers of the broom, and the flowers of the meadowsweet, and from those they called forth the very fairest and best endowed maiden that mortal ever saw.

— The Mabinogion.

Many accomplished actors live the parts they are playing, but it's no joke when a legend takes such a grip on them that it affects their private lives even after filming is over. This is precisely what happened to blonde actress Gillian Hills (she was one of the little girls who stripped off in Blow Up), Francis Wallis and Michael Holden. They play the three teenagers, step-brother and sister Roger and Alison and Welsh boy Gwyn in Granada's current mystery serial, The Owl Service. The story, which centres round an old Welsh legend, is set in a remote mid-Wales valley near the town of Dinas Mawddwy, where much of the filming was done. The trio discover an old dinner service in an attic and Alison finds that if she traces its unusual pattern and fits it together, the figure of an owl appears. In fact, owls are the key to the whole intriguing mystery (now in its third week) in which the three become involved in the ancient legend of the beautiful Blodeuwedd. Created out of flowers as a wife for the hero Lleu, she was turned into an owl after being unfaithful to him with her lover Gronw. The cruelties and passions generated by these legendary figures still disturb the valley, and begin to take possession of Gwyn, Alison and Roger. Slightly sceptical of the legend, I invited the trio to a reunion down in the depths of the Essex country-side. I took with me one of the original plates, with startling results. It conjured instant memories which hurtled us all mentally into mid-Wales. Brought up in a converted shepherd's cottage in Snowdonia, 19-year-old Michael Holden described how the legend took control of them during filming.

— Ann Beveridge, The Observer on Sunday magazine, January 1970.

It was an incredible experience for all of us. It was as if we personally were really living the thing. The legend, the spirit of the valley was so strong that we became obsessed by it. I felt very close to the whole thing. The area was so much like where I grew up in Bethesda—and it was nice to go back to being outnumbered by sheep.

— Michael Holden, The Observer on Sunday magazine, January 1970.

The Owl Service is a kind of ghost story, in real life as well as on the film or page. Right from the start things happened that haven't happened with any other book I've written. It began when I read an old Welsh legend about Lleu, and his wife Blodeuwedd, who was made for him out of flowers. Later she fell in love with Gronw Pebyr, and together they murdered Lleu. Lleu was brought back to life by magic, and he killed Gronw by throwing a spear with such force that it went right through the rock behind which Gronw was sheltering; and the rock, says the legend, is called the Stone of Gronw to this day. Blodeuwedd, for her part in her husband's murder, was turned into an owl. The legend stuck in my mind for several years, and then one day Griselda's mother showed me an old dinner service that she had. She had noticed that the floral pattern round the edges of the plates could be seen as the body, wings and head of an owl. Griselda traced the pattern, juggled it a bit, and there it was-a paper owl.

— Alan Garner, Filming The Owl Service, an Armada special, 1970.

Rehearsals began at Poulton, and I met the actors for the first time. It was a nasty experience. "Well," said Peter, "do they look right?" I wanted to run. They looked too right. It was like a waking dream. Here were the people I'd thought about, who'd lived in my head for so long ; but now they were real. I couldn't accept that they were only actors. And this feeling got worse when they began to read their parts, and speak the words I'd given them. We took the cast to Wales for a couple of days right at the start, so that they coil hi get the feel of the original setting. Now my waking dream grew worse. The characters were where I'd imagined them, and it was as if I was looking at live ghosts.

— Alan Garner, Filming The Owl Service, an Armada special, 1970.

Bridget Appleby (Graphic Artist) Richard Branczik (Camera Assistant) Harry Brookes (Sound Recordist) Peter Caldwell (Designer) Jack Coggins (Generator Operator) Stewart Darby (Stills Photographer) Sue Fox (Press & Publicity) Alan Garner (Scriptwriter) Ray Goode (Cameraman) James Green (Chargehand Electrician) Frank Griffiths (Music Recordist) Don Kelly (Film Editor) Alan Kennedy (Props Manager) Neil Kingsbury (Sound Assistant) John Martin (Electrician) Ian McAnulty (Stage Hand) John Murphy (Casting Director) Marjorie Norrey (Wardrobe) John Oakins (Unit Manager) Peter Plummer (Producer & Director) Dick Pope (Camera Assistant) Michael Popley (Camera Assistant) Jon Prince (Asst. Film Editor) Harry Rabbie (Camera Assistant) Elvira Riddell (Make-up) Phil Smith (Sound Recordist) Michael Thomson (Camera Assistant) Peter Walker (Dubbing Mixer) Alan Waterfall (Set Dresser) Louise Williams (Production Assistant) David Wood (Cameraman).

Granada Television for ITV. December 21, 1969 — February 8, 1970. 16mm, colour. Filming locations: Dinas Mawddwy, Gwynedd, Wales, UK and Poulton Hall, Liverpool, Merseyside, England, UK.

The Owl Service was much admired but because I could never bear to watch myself I have seen it only now. Father's very proper English family frowned at having an actress in the family yet they watched the first episode to see what I was like and followed the whole series. That was a huge compliment. The Owl Service was a magnificent gift that allowed me to haul back a slice of my lost youth. It had fallen by the wayside at fourteen when I was 'discovered' by Roger Vadim. No more contact with kids my age meant there was a chink in my learning compass. So my memory is not of anecdotes, stories. I was totally engrossed with the feel of Alison. In effect, Alison allowed me to become while she too was unfolding. It also played a part in changing the course of my life. The graphics designer for The Owl Service came while we were filming and I told him how curious I was about his work: when I was a recording artist in Paris I'd go round to see my friends at the music magazine Salut Les Copains - I adored the way the magazine was being put together. The designer invited me to visit the TV centre where they produced the visuals, soon I began at St Martins, but work was always taking me away, then Sir John Cass, Saturdays - but I was filming a lot. Throughout my childhood I was always drawing. My grandmother was a painter but we never met. When I began acting I gave up drawing. Three years after The Owl Service I would plunge into illustrating. The Owl Service is a peculiar work. Singular. Mesmerising. It stands out as a one off ... I never thought The Owl Service was for children only. It felt as if it fit a larger audience. That's what made it special. Because it also belongs somewhere where the memory of one's own adolescence lies. It is super-real to the extent that it becomes unreal. Wagnerian. And too, like an old film it unreels itself repeatedly, then begins again. Any criticism that the series was unsuitably adult for children is untrue. Never underestimate the child; it is pure, it observes, makes up its own mind. But then is taught to see things otherwise ... I have not read Peter's book I've Seen a Ghost. I was unaware of it and maybe I should not read it. My grand father, the superlative Polish poet Boleslaw Lesmian, was ruled by his exceeding 'superstitiousness,' so the family was too. Artists are sensitive to this in varying degrees. I am glad I focused on Alison. But if something unusual happened I would keep it to myself. I prefer to believe I am contemplating the cosiness of a blanket than a levitating counterpane.

— Gillian Hills in conversation with Kevin Lyons, The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television, 2008.

I've Seen a Ghost: True Stories from Show Business compiled by Richard Davis. Hutchinson, 1979.

The mood of this book darkens perceptibly with Mr Plummer's piece. Many of you will remember the excellent TV adaptation of Alan Garner's ' The Owl Service', that strange novel about spiritual possession, haunting and fascinating in its own right. As you will read, uncanny events took place on screen as well as on. It seems that when you are creating productions about the super-natural in whatever medium, you are laying yourself wide open to psychical onslaught.

We shot it on location at a little village church in Cheshire and it concerned the theory that the 'dark lady' referred to in Shakespeare's sonnets was a local girl, Mary Fitton. Her ghost is said to haunt the area around the church which is, in any case, a strangely solemn and timeless setting of still pond, dark trees and ancient gravestones. It had rained hard the night before we arrived, but now, as we came to the village, a hot summer sun suddenly blazed out from behind the clouds and David's camera was presented with the extraordinary sight of individual mists rising from each of the quickly heated stones of the old flat box-tombs. All the way across the big churchyard these white veils were being drawn up from every grave. As the mist closed, it revealed, lying on the newly mown grass by the south door of the church, a scythe. Presumably the rain had interrupted the mower the previous evening. Anyway, as a piece of tempus fugit symbolism it was just too tempting and we used it in the film as a requiescat for poor Mary. After a gap of many years — nine years after the making of 'The Owl Service', in fact — I found myself once more back at that same remote village church, this time to attend a service. It was the winter of 1977-78. A grey day offering neither sun, cloud nor vision. The mechanics of the service determined that we enter the church by the north door and leave by the south. As we came out into the cold fresh air through that south door, there, on the grass, was the scythe. I correct myself. There on the grass was a scythe. Between the first and second sightings lay a gap of some fifteen years. I know very well that the object can't have been lying there on that grass verge for that length of time. For all I know they now use a motor-mower and I can only guess at the chances that brought the thing to that spot the second time around. But you may care to know that the occasion which had brought me back to that church was the funeral of David Wood who, some years earlier, had decided to come and live in the village. All of which — if you have ever read Alan Garner's original book of 'The Owl Service' — or indeed any of his books — is not quite such a detour from our starting point as it might seem. Because an idea whose variations dominate Alan's books and films is that all time runs, in a sense, in parallel, and that patterns of violently emotional climaxes can imprint themselves through from one parallel to another. This is, if you like, rather in the way that 'pre-echo' can occur in gramophone records or that aligned areas of sound tape can occasionally suffer from a print-through so that magnetic patterns of certain particularly strong resonances may occasionally be duplicated out of context in adjoining areas of that tape spool. As a result, when we come to play the tape it runs in continuous and uninterrupted sequence but occasionally we hear displaced echoes both before and after their true situation. Is this what happened with 'The Owl Service'? And were Alan's book and Granada's television film themselves the inevitable echoes, and 'prints-through', from the past event? Or, just as plausibly, were they and was the vision of the original men who 'created' the legend pre-echoes? Were they 'prints-back' from a shattering primary event that, on a normal consideration of time, hasn't yet happened?

#The Owl Service #Alan Garner #1969 #Granada Television #Gillian Hills #Michael Holden #Francis Wallis #Edwin Richfield #Dorothy Edwards #Raymond Llewellyn #Peter Plummer #Bridget Appleby #The Mabinogion #Dinas Mawddwy #Poulton Hall

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