Magical Mystery Tour Location Question

[[flabbyroad]]

You're right about the roof; I think it's a roof, no reflections either just another building it seems. What about the 'water pump' if it is a pump perhaps it's a clue for a railway station?

( In the magical mystery tour you can see smoke from the chimneys on the left upper side and on the footpath is some walking.... )

And

[beatlesondvd]

I subscribe to Andrew Sullivan's 'The Dish', a weekly newsletter on current affairs. As a sideline, he has a feature called 'View from My Window' where readers can send in a photo taken from any window in any building anywhere in the world, and other readers have to guess which country/city/building it was taken from.

There's a guy called 'Chini' who is apparently a US attorney, who plays that game every week and wins it every single time, regardless of where the photo was taken. He'd probably zero in on the locations you're looking for in no time.

[Sn00ker]

I can't post a Google map link at the moment, but have a look at Furzeleigh Mill to the north of Buckfastleigh in Devon. The road looking back towards Buckfastleigh is good match. Trees obscure the town buildings but so much has changed since 1967. What do you think?

[harrylime]

One is suggesting a town in Devon and another one is suggesting a town in Kent... Assuming they spent only one supplemental shooting day for getting all the b-roll footage with either no or stand-in passengers, wouldn't it make sense to narrow down the search to the region we already have shooting locations for? Eg Uxbridge Road in Hayes and the A4155 in Marlow? In other words west of London?

[Sn00ker]

One is suggesting a town in Devon and another one is suggesting a town in Kent... Assuming they spent only one supplemental shooting day for getting all the b-roll footage with either no or stand-in passengers, wouldn't it make sense to narrow down the search to the region we already have shooting locations for? Eg Uxbridge Road in Hayes and the A4155 in Marlow? In other words west of London?

Yes, you're right it probably isn't part of the main shoot in Devon/Cornwall. Although it's quite possible they spent more than one day shooting b-roll footage.

[Doug]

What would really help is a 1967 map with the route marked with times and dates of places they were at.

As for the mystery still... I agree. It's probably right around the corner from where they filmed Neil standing by the tree as the bus passes.
And... I feel silly, but I never noticed before there are two women standing there waving, not one (of course, that doesn't help at all!).

[harrylime]

I agree Doug. I skimmed through the movie again to find all the shots, to me there's the following groups

- The open field shots as shown in the movie's intro, where the bus seems to be driving on airfield tarmac. One shot has a group of passengers without colorful clothing, and I noticed the photographer with the lion's head scene (after the car race) features a similar smaller set of the cast (no Beatles), so I would put this on West Malling October 1st
- The Hayes shots of the stand-in passengers and night time bird's eye.
- Countryside shots consisting of overhead shots (one with Neil, one bridge), hillside with the waving children (or women?), village centre, and three shots with a fence: bus entering the farm driveway, close up and one from higher up.

This doesn't account for the bootlegged shots that I can't access right now, but I'm not sure if that would add anything to the search here.

I first focused on the fence shots:





Using the HD version I could read the farm driveway sign as 'Kings Barn Farm'. There's only one farm with that name in Arshurst, Sussex, so that puzzled me at first, but Google also a returned two pages on monumentaltrees.com about trees "on the grounds of Kings Barn Farm in Marlow" having coordinates around the corner the already found location of the overhead bridge shot! Then with Street View it isn't hard to find a driveway with a similar fence here, and observing that the road has a steep hillside, I would safely assume the fence shots were all made there.

I wish the waving children shot was as easy as this. I also have a strong feeling it was made close by, but investing hours already didn't bring me one step closer. I did notice a few things about it:

- the road profile is remarkably wide for a country road, eg the A4155 in the Marlow shots is much more narrow, let alone B-roads
- it has a wide sidewalk, uncommon for roads around Chiltern Hills (including Marlow)
- it's on a steep hillside, not very common for A-roads

Looking more towards the area around Slough I noticed that much more roads there have sidewalks, so I'm getting the feeling the location is closer to Hayes than to Marlow. And perhaps the road was later on converted to a dual carriageway... Another thing is that both the waving shot as the Uxbridge road don't have the sunshine warmness that the farm shots have.

[thewarpedvinyljunkie]

Am I hallucinating, am I forgetting a plot point, did I miss this in the discussion about this section of b-roll filming, or in all of these three shots (and the one above) does the bus look empty except for the driver?

[Sn00ker]

Great work Harry.

I think FL is correct in that there is a railway station water pump in the picture. So somewhere that had a railway station in 1967, (but might not have one now).

[harrylime]

Indeed and there’s also a railway overpass visible to the left of it.

Am I hallucinating, am I forgetting a plot point, did I miss this in the discussion about this section of b-roll filming, or in all of these three shots (and the one above) does the bus look empty except for the driver?

Well it was mentioned in the discussion about the rainy day footage as for the night time Hayes shots. Correct me if I’m wrong but there seems to be only one b-roll shot with stand-in passengers, the daytime Uxbridge road with a few elderly ladies and two women with small children. Of course the waving picture is problematic to link to any day as it’s hard to tell if it’s actually empty and you can only barely see some decals on the side, not their spacing. Occam’s Razor would suggest it being shot close to the other Marlow locations as Doug mentions but having checked that region there’s a growing suspicion it was either shot closer to London or (lets hope not) during the trips with the regular cast (including The Beatles) making it a far wider area to search.