Monument record 0941200000 - BEACONSFIELD FILM STUDIOS

Film studios set up in 1922 and ran until 1964 when the site became a Gas Board warehouse. In 1993 the National School of Film and Television bought the studios. Nick Park's animated film 'Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out' (1989) began life as a project whilst Park was a student at the National Film and Television School (B1).
Built in 1921 by George Clark Productions. The first production was a two-reeler comedy 'The Beauty and the Beast'. The studios were bought by Edgar Wallace's British Lion Film Corporation in 1928. In 1930 Beaconsfield Studios first talkie 'The Squeaker' was produced, directed by Wallace. In 1939 the Ministry of Works requisitioned the studios for Rotax to make aircraft engine magnetos. After the war, British Lion was bought by Alexander Korda in 1946 but sold the freehold of the Studios to Kings College, Cambridge. The Crown Film Unit moved in and produced 75 films a year for the Central Office of Information, befor the Unit was wound up in 1951. From 1953-5 the studios were the base of the National Film Finance Corporation. Films continued to be made at the studios and from 1957 television series were also shot there. In 1966 the last feature film made at the studions was 'Press for Time' starring Norman Wisdom. The studios were then leased as warehousing to the North Thames Gas Board, until the National Film and Television School bought the site in 1971, making it the only UK film school with its own film and TV studios (B2).