In April and May 2006 the fields behind the farm were covered in satellite TV and media trucks and all the film location wagons, as Renee Zellwigger played the part of Beatrix Potter. There simply wasn't room at the real Hill Top, and rather than ruin the real garden, the film company gave Yew Tree Farm a well stocked garden. The media circus blocked the road (A593) temporarily. We had to find another way into Coniston. Very little had to be done to exterior of Yew Tree Farm to make it look like Hill Top in 1900's, as its National Trust policy to keep things looking the way they have always looked.
Various other locations were used around the Lake District including Miresyke, Loweswater (sat writing in closing shot), Derwentwater (Fawe Park with parents) and Dentdale (railway viaduct).
Both Hill Top and Yew Tree Farm were bequeathed to the National Trust by Beatrix Potter. From the monies from her books, she bought the Monk Coniston estate to stop it being broken up. Yew Tree Farm is part of that estate. Beatrix sold half the estate to the National Trust, bequeathing the remainder. Beatrix died in 1943.
Links
North West Vision account of choosing this location
"Beatrix’s own choices had shaped it. Yet when we visited it, we were frustrated: it may be great for stills photography, but for movie making it was impossibly restrictive. Such are the surroundings (barns built later by Beatrix and therefore outside our period, a wonderful but precious heritage garden) that staging any scene (and we had many to stage) forced us too close to the front door and left us with nowhere to put the camera. The National Trust, its owner, were keen for us to use it - it seemed pretty ungrateful of us not to jump at it.
Driving to the station to catch our train back to London, we were shown one more farm to add to Beatrix’s portfolio of real estate. It wouldn’t have a name, it would just be part of a montage sequence. It was Yew Tree Farm and it took little time to realise that it should be our Hill Top. We were confident enough for it to be the only Hill Top candidate we’d show to our cinematographer, Andrew Dunn.
Its disadvantages were few, and to us insignificant: we’re calling it Hill Top and it’s at the bottom of a hill; all Potterfiles know the real thing, and we mustn’t alienate them. At risk of oversimplifying my job, both of these would be relatively easy to overcome with carefully chosen camera angles (next time we'd have Andrew with us) a more historically photogenic paint finish, and the addition of glazing bars and familiar Hill Top greenery. Once these were achieved the task would be for our greensmen to take it back a hundred years to become a working garden again.
I photographed it from its most ‘Hill Top’ angle and took the photo home to form the basis of a concept drawing (top right image) I would use to convince anyone who needed convincing, and the National Trust needed convincing. Aware that they would be disappointed that in our view Hill Top couldn’t play Hill Top, I went to great lengths to show via a sheet of A4 paper that Yew Tree could not only play Hill Top better, it was the only farm that could play it at all. I realised I had become stubborn about our decision when I added the pigs. Now is the time to confess that I drew an oversized, out-of-scale, monster pig, plus more piglets than would ever be necessary, wandering wherever they wished, simply in order to make the National Trust fearful that if we were to bring them along to the real Hill Top they would probably destroy that wonderful heritage garden. This way we might get our way. Art and politics are inextricably linked.
We returned with Andrew Dunn and the drawing. Andrew was convinced. The location was so full of possibilities we were spoilt for choice. The movie's art director, Mark Raggett, listed all the points we would have to negotiate with the National Trust, chiefly colour (Yew Tree was too white for Hill Top), our wish to dig up the lawn, and, replacing an existing wooden fence, a dry-stone wall across the entire width of the site. After many conversations, and with the enthusiastic blessing of the tenant farmers, a real wall would be built, with no showbiz plaster fakery. (It now looks as though it will be there for good.)
About three weeks after the dry-stone waller started we were ready to shoot. The greensmen, all real gardeners but with a film maker's knowledge of how much should be living, how much could be fake, made a working farm out of Yew Tree’s tea garden and, using photographs of Hill Top, fixed matching wisteria to the wall. We built a shelter for the pigs which would be taken down when we were finished, assuming the pigs didn’t take it down first. A bonus was that the outbuildings at Yew Tree, unlike those at Hill Top, predated Beatrix’s arrival, in some cases by centuries.
If you look at Martin Childs' concept drawing you’ll see the real Beatrix in the doorway, lifted from an old photograph. The moment we saw Renée Zellweger in the same pose it was clear to all that the right decision had been made." Martin Childs
Guardian Newspaper article
Providentially, Miss Potter has emerged from a tortuous 15 years of negotiations and delay, including an abortive notion of staging Beatrix Potter - the Musical, into a story which deals with much more than cutesy animals. "It's about someone who is well known, but little known," says David Thwaites, one of four producers who have made the author's remarkable contribution to the Lake District central to the plot. Settling close to Windermere as the wife of local solicitor William Heelis, Potter used the fortune from her 23 little books - the most popular ever written for children - to buy up some of the loveliest parts of what is now the national park.
Furniture used by modern guests was given by Potter in the 1930s to her tenants at Yew Tree when they were about to abandon running Herdwick sheep because of the slump. She persuaded them to give B&B a try, with the help of comfy beds and antique dressers to attract customers from down south.
Cumbria Tourist Board's promotion to visit the filming sites
Miss Potter Movie (flash)
Yew Tree Farm is a Bed and Breakfast and sells heritage meats
LDNPA reckon filming for "Miss Potter" took place in London, the Isle of Man and the Lake District at Loughrigg Terrace and Loughrigg Tarn, Grasmere and Yew Tree Farm, Coniston. They have missed out Miresyke, just inside the National Park Boundary.