On Friday 26 September, Elstree Studios reopened Stages 7, 8 and 9 after being closed for several years due to asbestos and concrete structural issues. Rudolph Walker CBE was asked to cut the ribbon outside of Stage 7 to declare them open once more!

The Elstree Project's director, Howard Berry, was among the invited guests and was asked to speak about the productions made on those stages. Below is a history of the stages and some of those iconic productions.

In 1966, ABPC’s Managing Director Robert Clark — a Scotsman appointed that same year — oversaw the opening of three new stages at Elstree, built at a cost of £1 million to mark the studio’s 40th anniversary.

The expansion reflected the demand for more facilities to serve the booming television market. Both The Saint and The Baron had already been pre-sold in colour to America, and ABPC...

Recently, The Elstree Project were invited to go to BBC Elstree Centre to record and document the building in 360º photography, video and with LiDAR — a laser scanning system which records the exact dimensions, space and details of a room as data which can then be turned into a virtual 3D model. We spent four days on site at the Fairbanks Building and Neptune House, and we also took an acoustic sound print of Stage M so that its ambient sound tone can be recreated.

The 360º images will be edited together to form a "Google street-view" style interactive tour of the buildings, with embedded stills and audio from our archive. For the first time, the public will be able to walk through the buildings and onto the stages and hear voices of those who worked there.

Here's a preview of Howard on Stage D, as part of our work!