Jack Hargreaves ~ Manor houses

"If you get your main impression of rural life in England chiefly from the television you'll come to believe the country people of England were dominated by families of grandees who lived in absolutely gigantic and magnificent houses because those are the sort of houses that are now used to provide the setting for television series. It wasn't really like that..."
A half episode of 'Old Country' on Channel 4 broadcast in the early 1980s in which Jack makes a distinction between 'grandees' and the small manor houses of the 'country squires' who, unlike the rarely seen grandees, were woven into rural society. Jack shows in this 12 minute clip some of the places where they lived in his part of the world - and a discarded horseshoe in a 'reliable' stream.
Thanks once again to the viewer who sent me this. It is a pleasure to float my stepfather's material on the internet. It amazes me, and others who talk to me about him, the amount of knowledge - words and images - he gets into his short films without seeming to hurry. The appearance of being relaxed was hard won. JH knew that talking well to people on television was a craft. Members of the production team, especially George Egan, have told me Jack and Steve Wagstaff (location camera on Old Country) and previously Stan Bréhaut (21 years location cameraman on Out of Town) filmed what's called 1 to 1. Most TV is filmed 1 to 50 even, in the case of commercials 1 to100 or more, with lots of editing and, in earlier days, film discarded on the cutting room floor. With Jack they rolled, he started chatting, and there was never a retake. When mistakes arose Jack said 'that happens in conversation." In another clip I've seen Jack tells an interviewer "I didn't make the films. Stan did". Of Stan's art as an outdoor cameraman the novelist Graham Hurley told me: "I knew Stan Bréhaut and George Egan very well. Stan was the first cameraman I ever worked with. He was a loner and a buccaneer, which I guess is why Jack rated him so highly, but he had a hatred of tripods which - towards the end of a great career - became a bit of a handicap. He used to work with an old handheld Ari, which limited him to 100ft rolls of film (just over two minutes), but this kind of discipline bred a fiercely economic shooting style and meant that rarely a shot was ever wasted. Nowadays, of course, most video cameraman graduate straight from the Fire Brigade school of location work and simply hose the thing around on the assumption that post-production might salvage a shot of two from the wreckage."

Jack Hargreaves, illustrated by Bernard Venables, 'Fishing for a year' MacGibbon & Kee 1951, republished Medlar Press 1998

Jack Hargreaves, 'Out of Town: A Life Relived on Television', Dovecote Press 1987

Jack Hargreaves, 'The Old Country', Dovecote Press 1988

Jack Hargreaves with Terry Heathcote, 'The New Forest: A Portrait in Colour', Dovecote Press 1992

Paul Peacock, 'Jack Hargreaves - A Portrait', Farming Books & Videos 2006

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Stan Bréhaut
• Jack Hargreaves
• Out of Town
• old Country
• manor houses

[erroneousapostrophe]

Reliant Scimitar

[Sibadd]

@erroneousapostrophe at 09.10

[casinosquare1]

yes a 73/4 GTE in cowpat brown....great stuff!

thanks for posting....brilliant.

[cooper68ns]

thank you for these they warm ones heart.thanks

[erroneousapostrophe]

@Sibadd 9:10 aye. Thanks for posting more of Jack

[erroneousapostrophe]

d'Urbervilles

[uncklebuck1]

Awesome

[bushranger71]

Thanks again-these are so charming-the world was much slower then.

"Grandees" indeed! Gold plates for royalty-Elizabeth almost bankrupted some of the aristocracy by bringing her entire court for a visit, at the host's expense of course.