Garden of England: Sites of Production and Pilgrimage

This paper reflects upon the research of an on-going project exploring the histories of location shooting in rural England. The county of Kent on the country’s southeast coast is an effective case study given the amount of filming that has occurred in the region across the decades, from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s iconic wartime film A Canterbury Tale (1944) to a recent instalment of the Marvel superhero franchise Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). As this paper will explore, such works not only fuel Kent’s position within popular consciousness as ‘the garden of England’ but also serve to establish the county as the UK’s most significant location for film production outside London. The paper draws on a range of materials to thus consider how filmic legacies and associations (including film-tourism) impact on the county’s identity in economic, social and cultural terms. These materials include oral history testimonies from affected members of Kent’s village communities as well as an interview with the organiser of the annual A Canterbury Tale location walk. It also includes interviews with staff from Kent Film Office, which is primarily an economic development initiative that liaises with film production companies but has, in recent years, begun exploring ways in which to better understand and, therefore, increase film-tourism in the region.