Requiem for a Film Studio: The Death and Afterlife of Denham

Abstract

London Film Productions’ Denham Studios were the largest and most advanced in Britain when they opened in 1936. Despite producing some of the best-known British-made films of the next 15 years, the studios were hampered by an inefficient layout and closed in 1951. But this was not the end of their story. This article shows what happened to the studios when they ceased to function as a site of film production, as they were emptied, put to new uses, disassembled and eventually memorialised. Faced with a complex legacy, new commercial and residential developments could choose to either commemorate the site’s film industrial heritage or try to erase it. Films may no longer be made at Denham, but remnants of, and ideas about, the studios are still at work in the site’s built, natural and imaginative environments.