Haddon Hall on fire

If you have seen the first episode of the new BBC's adaptation of Jane Eyre, you are probably acquainted with the convincing fire scene that ends the first part of the series. Now imagine the scene where all Thornfield Hall (Haddon Hall) is in flames. In the novel, it is only explained, but it seems that in this production the fire is very real (look at the picture on the right. Credits: Don MacPhee/Guardian).

One of the first news items that was published about this Jane Eyre was related, precisely, to the shooting of that scene in Haddon Hall. Now The Guardian devotes a whole article to this scene.

The BBC could have done it all with computer graphics. Instead, they used real smoke and real flames and set Haddon, in the heart of the Peak District near Bakewell, alight on three consecutive nights.

"On the first night, there were 130 calls to the fire brigade in three minutes," said Janet O'Sullivan, the hall's administrator. "It's nice to know people care about us. But it was the scariest night of my life. As flames leapt from the windows, I kept thinking to myself, 'If this is going wrong, how are we going to know?'" (...)

"The special effects man was down below and was very calm," added Ms O'Sullivan. "'That's enough, thank you,' he said when there were sufficient flames."

Such was his skill that Haddon suffered no ill effects and is looking forward to a surge in visitor numbers as the four-hour adaptation gets under way. (...)

At the height of the Thornfield fire, Bertha plunges to her death from the hall's roof: "We saw [Rochester] approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement ... dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were scattered."

The BBC's stuntwoman did not fancy a similar fate following her leap from Haddon's north-west tower and said she would jump just once. "They built a platform over the steps and fixed a huge airbag on it," said Ms O'Sullivan. "Then she plummeted from the tower and the airbag just folded completely round her. She seemed to be there for ages but then the airbag just unfolded."

The production team, which spent four chilly weeks at Haddon in February, used many other of the hall's spaces, including the long gallery, which became Thornfield's drawing room, and the chapel, scene of the wedding of Jane (Ruth Wilson) to Mr Rochester (Toby Stephens), halted when a mystery stranger cries: "The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment." (David Ward)

Categories: In_the_News, Jane_Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV