Programmes filmed at Hever Castle for new exhibition

April 18 2019 | Castle

 

Visitors will soon have the chance to see posters, costumes and information about films and programmes filmed at Hever Castle as part of a new small temporary exhibition.

Two dresses from the film Anne of the Thousand Days, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and a sword dredged from the moat after filming for The Passionate Pilgrim starring Eric Morecambe and Tom Baker, will be among the items on display.

The story of the mysterious La Peregrina Pearl will be available for visitors to explore as part of the new exhibition about programmes filmed at Hever Castle. Bought by actor Richard Burton for Elizabeth Taylor during their first marriage, the $11millon dollar pearl was seen on screen for the first time at Hever Castle when Taylor played a cameo role in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), having been rejected for the coveted part of Anne Boleyn. During its visit to Hever, the pearl was briefly reunited with two Hever portraits which depict it being worn on the Queens who once owned it: Mary I and Elizabeth de Valois.

During the filming of a sword fight on Hever Castle’s drawbridge for the 1984 short film The Passionate Pilgrim, Tom Baker lost grip of his sword and it tumbled into the moat. Twenty-seven years later, when the castle’s moat was drained Baker’s sword was discovered poking out of the silt, and will be displayed for the first time during the Hever Castle on Stage and Screen exhibition.

Photographs from an opera about Thomas Boleyn performed for the previous owners, the Astors in 1972 and also images from some of the TV programmes filmed at Hever Castle will be available to see at the exhibition.

The exhibition, which will open on 13 May and run until November, will be in the Castle’s Moat Room (not usually open to the public) and will be included as part of Castle and Garden admission.