Trench war comes to Downton Abbey
The new television series uses a replica of a First World War battlefield – constructed in a field just outside Ipswich .
Taff Gillingham, left, and Iain Hollingshead in a replica First World War British trench Photo: WAYNE NEAL
Imagine you’re the producer of Downton Abbey. You have a £12 million budget to film the next series, eagerly anticipated by 13 million viewers. But episode one opens at the Battle of the Somme and you need a convincing trench. Do you risk accusations of bad taste by paying one of the museums in France to film there? Do you buy a JCB and a plot of land and start digging? Or do you film it all in CGI and hope no one notices?
Just as you start to despair, your location scout comes back from East Anglia and says, you’ll never guess what, but there’s a field on a farm just outside Ipswich with two purpose-built trenches, one German, one British, a carefully sculpted no man’s land and more machine-gun posts than you can shake a poster of Kitchener at. It’s been hired over the last decade by everyone from Channel 4 documentaries to Blue Peter. What’s more, the guy who runs it is a military history buff with access to hundreds of expert extras, uniforms and replica weapons.
Taff Gillingham, 45, is one of those lovely British fanatics blessed with infectious enthusiasm and a bizarrely effective idea. The son of an RAF officer, he began collecting uniforms aged six. While working in television production he became increasingly frustrated by erroneous military detail on screen. Instead of carping about such howlers as actors kitted out in tin hats in 1914 (they weren’t issued widely until later), he and a friend set up a company called Khaki Devil.
Ten years on, he is able to provide standard uniforms from 1899 to the present day, including such obscure versions as the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs, an infantry regiment in the British Indian Army (for a Channel 5 documentary on Victoria Cross recipients). His replica props range from Great War pay books to leave passes, corned beef tins to Maconochie Stew labels, Army Cyclist Corps bicycles to Lewis machine guns.
Having formed a supply company, however, he also found himself building trenches for productions all over the country, only to have to fill them in again afterwards. So he teamed up with a farmer to build a permanent trench on a fallow, chalky field outside Ipswich. “We had to get planning permission, much to the amusement of the local council,” he says. “There are no local government guidelines on trench building.”
Instead, using the British Trench Building Manual of 1916 and a JCB, they carved out the basic structure in just 10 days, including shell holes, latrines, a stretcher-bearers’ post and a network of communication trenches.
In 2006, for the BBC’s documentary The Somme – From Defeat to Victory, they added a German trench at the top of the hill, its banks covered in poppies, a flower that grows as well in Suffolk as in Flanders. Between the two they cultivated an artfully bleak no man’s land, complete with barbed wire and half-destroyed fibreglass trees held together with nails.
“It’s a large enough set for the camera to pull back and show the scale,” says Gillingham. “Although if they’re filming in no man’s land, they have to use a blue screen to block out the electricity pylons.”
Other adaptations for filming include making the angle of the zig-zagging trenches less acute (they were normally built at 90 degrees to prevent blasts killing everyone). A drainage ditch above the British trench stops rainwater doing too much damage. And there is a small “island” in one trench where a cameraman can stand and get repetitive shots of soldiers filing past.
One’s overwhelming impression, however, on entering the trenches is how realistic they appear. Boxes of .303 ammunition sit in alcoves in the walls. Ladders lie ready for going over the top. A thousand sandbags protect your head until you do so. A 20-minute bombardment during filming of The Somme – From Defeat to Victory was apparently so realistic that a local old boy, boasting glorious Suffolk whiskers, emerged from his bath to see what was going on.
Gillingham is a stickler for detail, gleefully sharing a rumour that Steven Spielberg’s expensive production of War Horse, due for release at the end of this year, features Israeli ammunition boxes in its WWI trenches.
When Downton Abbey came to film in March, Gillingham instructed the actors on trench life (he won’t say which ones, although we know from interviews that Matthew Crawley, played by Dan Stevens, has swapped his lawyerly linen suit for a more sober uniform). Lessons included how to load a rifle properly, and remembering to bend your elbow while marching and not stamp your feet.
“It makes me wince when people get it wrong,” he says. Gillingham appointed himself “sergeant”, in charge of his “A team” of 75 best extras, many of them re-enactment enthusiasts from clubs such as the Great War Society. He’s seen a rough cut of Downton’s war scenes and – high praise – thinks they “almost look like a documentary”. Aside from the film crews, Gillingham rents his trench out cheaply to student productions and the Suffolk branch of the Western Front Association, which held a poetry evening last week. He also gives talks in schools about the Great War, attempting to shatter the “lions led by donkeys rubbish” promulgated by such poetry.
“It really p––––– the old boys off,” he says, many of whom he met while filming The Last Tommy for the BBC. “But that generation was far too polite to say so. The last 100 days of the First World War were among the most successful in British military history.”
Gillingham’s only regret appears to be his inability to have persuaded Working Title, which bought the film option for Sebastian Faulks’s novel Birdsong, to use his trench, despite calling them twice a year for a decade. Eventually, it was decided that the book was unfilmable in a two-hour format and Working Title is adapting it as a BBC series in Hungary, which, unlike the UK, offers substantial tax breaks for television productions.
One wonders, though, what will happen after 2018 if interest in trench-war films dies out. Will Gillingham turn the field into the ultimate paintballing experience?
“You know, you’re the third person this week to ask that,” he replies with a smile. Whatever happens, there’s some corner of an Ipswich field that is for ever France.
In 2006, for the BBC’s documentary The Somme – From Defeat to Victory, they added a German trench at the top of the hill, its banks covered in poppies, a flower that grows as well in Suffolk as in Flanders. Between the two they cultivated an artfully bleak no man’s land, complete with barbed wire and half-destroyed fibreglass trees held together with nails.
“It’s a large enough set for the camera to pull back and show the scale,” says Gillingham. “Although if they’re filming in no man’s land, they have to use a blue screen to block out the electricity pylons.”
Other adaptations for filming include making the angle of the zig-zagging trenches less acute (they were normally built at 90 degrees to prevent blasts killing everyone). A drainage ditch above the British trench stops rainwater doing too much damage. And there is a small “island” in one trench where a cameraman can stand and get repetitive shots of soldiers filing past.
One’s overwhelming impression, however, on entering the trenches is how realistic they appear. Boxes of .303 ammunition sit in alcoves in the walls. Ladders lie ready for going over the top. A thousand sandbags protect your head until you do so. A 20-minute bombardment during filming of The Somme – From Defeat to Victory was apparently so realistic that a local old boy, boasting glorious Suffolk whiskers, emerged from his bath to see what was going on.
Gillingham is a stickler for detail, gleefully sharing a rumour that Steven Spielberg’s expensive production of War Horse, due for release at the end of this year, features Israeli ammunition boxes in its WWI trenches.
When Downton Abbey came to film in March, Gillingham instructed the actors on trench life (he won’t say which ones, although we know from interviews that Matthew Crawley, played by Dan Stevens, has swapped his lawyerly linen suit for a more sober uniform). Lessons included how to load a rifle properly, and remembering to bend your elbow while marching and not stamp your feet.
“It makes me wince when people get it wrong,” he says. Gillingham appointed himself “sergeant”, in charge of his “A team” of 75 best extras, many of them re-enactment enthusiasts from clubs such as the Great War Society. He’s seen a rough cut of Downton’s war scenes and – high praise – thinks they “almost look like a documentary”. Aside from the film crews, Gillingham rents his trench out cheaply to student productions and the Suffolk branch of the Western Front Association, which held a poetry evening last week. He also gives talks in schools about the Great War, attempting to shatter the “lions led by donkeys rubbish” promulgated by such poetry.
“It really p––––– the old boys off,” he says, many of whom he met while filming The Last Tommy for the BBC. “But that generation was far too polite to say so. The last 100 days of the First World War were among the most successful in British military history.”
Gillingham’s only regret appears to be his inability to have persuaded Working Title, which bought the film option for Sebastian Faulks’s novel Birdsong, to use his trench, despite calling them twice a year for a decade. Eventually, it was decided that the book was unfilmable in a two-hour format and Working Title is adapting it as a BBC series in Hungary, which, unlike the UK, offers substantial tax breaks for television productions.
One wonders, though, what will happen after 2018 if interest in trench-war films dies out. Will Gillingham turn the field into the ultimate paintballing experience?
“You know, you’re the third person this week to ask that,” he replies with a smile. Whatever happens, there’s some corner of an Ipswich field that is for ever France.
