The money raised from closing streets in a historic Herefordshire village last month to enable filming of a big-budget movie has been revealed.
The centre of Weobley, between Hereford and Kington, was closed between August 5 and 21 while the street and buildings at the junction of Broad Street, Church Road and Bell Square were given an 16th century look ahead of filming of scenes from Hamnet.
Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling novel and directed by Chloé Zhao, the film stars Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as his wife.
To enable the shoot, the road closure was sanctioned by Herefordshire Council. Its spokesperson said: “We charge a standard fee for ‘non-community event’ road closures which is £1,300.
“The road closures in Weobley were incorporated into one order, so there was only one charge.”
Meanwhile an application for listed building consent to adapt the buildings for the film shoot, submitted shortly before it began, has been withdrawn.
It did not appear from the responses it drew that the plans raised serious concerns.
The council’s historic buildings officer Debra Lewis said most of what the filmmakers proposed in their application didn’t need listed building consent.
Nor was consent required to remove a “potentially unauthorised” satellite dish from one of the listed buildings – although putting it back “would be likely to require listed building consent and potentially planning permission as no consent/permission was granted for its installation in the first instance”, Ms Lewis said.
And while she had some concerns over the use of temporary lead strips on windows and “fake” beams on walls, this “has to balanced against the public benefit of the proposal” – both in the short term during filming, and in “the wider appreciation of the heritage of the county”.
