Scrooge’s Shrewsbury
When Shropshire’s county town became the film set for Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
You can’t get much more Christmassy than Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
Yet, there can’t be many fictional characters with a real gravestone. But in Shrewsbury’s St Chad’s churchyard lies a weather-worn memorial with Ebenezer Scrooge’s name carved right across its surface.
Scrooge’s name was etched into reality when Shrewsbury hosted the 1984 film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The churchyard was the setting for that famous scene where the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come encourages Ebenezer to brush away the freshly fallen snow from the stone, revealing his name and the consequences if he doesn’t change his ways.
Even in daylight, when the jackdaws caw, its atmosphere is spooky. Unfortunately for the cast, this scene was shot at 2.30 in the morning, while the rest of Shrewsbury slept.
The 1984 film adaptation is one of the most popular versions of this cherished seasonal film, because it starred so many of our favourite actors. George C Scott played Scrooge, Frank Finlay was Jacob Marley, and Angela Pleasence first spooked Scrooge as the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Edward Woodward towered above everyone, literally, as the Ghost of Christmas Present, because he had to walk on stilts, and Michael Carter hid under a dark menacing costume as the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.
Television favourites David Warner and Susannah York delighted fans as Bob and Mrs. Cratchit.
Shrewsbury landed the location role by pure accident. The producers considered auditioning Chester and York as potential sets but planned to first meet in Shrewsbury to finalise their requirements before going their separate ways to check out each city.
However, one of the producers was late arriving, leaving the other time to explore Shrewsbury’s delights. When the two producers finally met up, they realised Shrewsbury had everything they needed.
It was as if the story was coming home, because the first public reading of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens took place in Shrewsbury. (It’s unclear whether this reading took place in the Market Hall or in The Lion Hotel, where Dickens stayed when visiting the town.)
The opening scenes were filmed in Market Square, but one scene had to be filmed twice. During a filming break, somebody inadvertently placed a white, polystyrene cup of tea down at the foot of one of the Old Market House pillars. It wasn’t until the film had been sent down to the Pinewood Studios overnight for processing that somebody spotted it, so the whole scene had to be shot again the next day.
Although Shrewsbury looked the part, it still needed a little dressing up to transform it into Dickensian London. All the shops surrounding the Old Market Hall in the Market Square were lined with false fronts, which meant the windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland were full of plastic turkeys!
From the Market Square, there’s a shortcut, through the Dickensianly-named Grope Lane, into the narrow cobbled Fish Street, with its timber-framed buildings. Here, beside Bear Steps, a narrow passageway cutting up to Butcher Row, there’s a narrow tiled-fronted building, wide enough for a single window and door. This was the exterior of Bob Cratchit’s house.
At the other end of Fish Street stands the square tower of St Julian’s Church. This view was used in the film’s closing scene, although a little television trickery turned the square tower of St Julian’s into the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.
More fancy film work meant that although all the exterior scenes were shot in Shrewsbury, all of the interiors were filmed in a large warehouse 15 miles away in Telford. So when viewers see David Warner step from the street into Bob Cratchit’s house he was filming in Shrewsbury, but when the scene cuts to inside the house, as he steps in through his front door, he was filming in Telford.
A few minutes' walk away is St Mary’s Church and the Parade Shopping Centre. The Parade Shopping Centre began life in 1826 as the Royal Salop Infirmary and was used in the film for the exterior shots of the Corn Exchange, where Scrooge did much business.
There’s one outside scene where a group of carol singers entertains Christmas shoppers as several children play about, skidding on the icy London streets. The difficulty with filming in April is that Shrewsbury’s streets aren’t that icy, but this is easily resolved in the film world. All you need are several pieces of MDF wood covered in sheets of plastic, creating a smooth surface, and lots of washing-up liquid to make things slippery.
When it comes to the film’s carol singers entertaining the Christmas shoppers all is not as it seems either. They were miming. The soundtrack was added later, but to ensure the miming matched the music, the carols were played through several concealed loudspeakers. Pity the poor actress who wore a long skirt to hide the speaker she was standing astride.
Just around the corner, in Windsor Place, is Perches House. This Grade II listed building was used as the exterior of Scrooge’s office in the film. He’d get a shock today if he walked in through the front door because it’s now a tattoo parlour.
Shrewsbury is blessed with many fine properties, and Belmont House, believed to date back to 1680, was used as Scrooge’s house. Like many of the film’s locations, it’s private property, but from the road, you can see the window Scrooge leaned out of on Christmas morning to stop a young boy and instruct him to go and buy the biggest turkey he could find.
A Christmas Carol is as famous for its ghosts as it is for Scrooge’s transformation, and it turns out that Shrewsbury didn’t let the film crew down when it came to ghostly encounters.
Many of the cast and crew stayed at the Prince Rupert Hotel, which is one of Shrewsbury’s most haunted buildings. Late one evening, when turning in for bed, a member of the crew was walking along a corridor towards his room when an elderly chap in a long nightgown walked past, carrying a candle.
The film crew member said, “Good night,” but thought nothing of it when the chap didn’t reply. Although, he did think it strange the candle cast very little light. What he wasn’t prepared for was when the chap suddenly turned and walked right through a brick wall.
Ghosts aside, the film’s lasting legacy for Shrewsbury is Scrooge’s gravestone, for which there was a little bit of luck. St Chad’s Church is only 20 years older than Charles Dickens himself, which meant it had the right feel and style of a Dickensian graveyard. And it’s this age that enabled the film to use a real gravestone for Ebenezer Scrooge. It’s so old most of the original carving has worn away.
But before it could be used church officials checked whether there were any living relatives of the deceased. Exhaustive inquiries found none, enabling the church to give permission for the character’s name to be carved into the stone.
And that’s how Ebenezer Scrooge came to be buried in Shrewsbury, in spirit, if not in reality.
It’s also a wonderful reminder for the town of the weeks when the glamour of the television and film world came to visit.
