Grounds used as location for murder mystery

Eagle-eyed Chiswick viewers will have spotted a local link to a TV murder mystery.

The 4.50 from Paddington took a detour via W4 in the latest all-star ITV1 adaptation featuring Agatha Christie’s Marple, screened on Boxing Day.

Based on the classic novel of the same name, the story features a woman being strangled on the train and thrown into the grounds of Rutherford Hall.

Spinster sleuth Jane Marple (Geraldine McEwan) persuades the glamorous Lucy Eyelsesbarrow (Amanda Holden) to take a job as housekeeper on the country estate – and look for the body.

The Ionic temple and obelisk in Chiswick House (see picture below) helped double for the Crackenthorpe family mausoleum at Rutherford Hall, where Lucy eventually finds the body hidden behind a curtain of ivy.

In addition the wonderful kitchen where even more scenes at the big house were shot is in fact at Gunnersbury Park in the Large Mansion - restored by the Friends, open to general visitors summer weekends and used for children's education activities in term time!

It’s just the latest of many film and TV productions to feature Chiswick over the last few years.

Chiswick House was among the locations for a new movie adaptation of Vanity Fair, starring Reese Witherspoon, while Amanda Holden was previously in W4 filming BBC1 sitcom Mad About Alice.

Other recent Chiswick-filmed productions include ITV1’s Frances Tuesday, with ex-EastEnder Tamzin Outhwaite, and Single, featuring Michelle Collins. And the film version of Viz comic’s The Fat Slags, starring local actress Fiona Allen and Sophie Thompson, also included W4 locations.

Local viewers of the Hanif Kureishi scripted film 'The Mother' which was screened on Channel 4 last night will have spotted Daniel Craig and Anne Reid taking a walk along Chiswick Mall to the graveyard in St. Nicholas's Church. The pair go to Hogarth's tomb and Daniel Craig quotes from the inscription on the gravestone adding that Hogarth's House is just 'round the corner'.

January 5, 2005