On this day in 2013, work began to clear “The Mound” at Elstree Studios.
For nearly 30 years, almost four acres at the rear of the studios had been unusable after contaminated material — including cement-based asbestos — had been deposited there. Hertsmere Borough Council approved a £4.5 million remediation project, and on 10 September 2013 then Studio Managing Director Roger Morris and Elstree Studios Chairman Morris Bright marked the beginning of the clearance works.
By the time the work was completed, some 33,700 cubic metres of material had been removed and the land had been returned to use as a major backlot.
What happened there afterwards demonstrates just how important that decision was. From 2015, the newly cleared backlot became home to the extensive exterior sets for The Crown, including 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace, which remained at Elstree throughout the series. More recently, it was transformed again for Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, with production designer Fiona Crombie constructing a remarkable recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre from reclaimed oak on the same piece of ground.
A patch of the studio that had lain unusable for decades became one of Elstree’s most valuable filmmaking spaces — and another chapter in the continuing story of the studios