Made in Mortlake ..

.. enjoyed around the world - Story 134

For one last time, Lord Crawley and friends ..

Two days before its UK release, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale already carries a 90 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The final chapter of Julian Fellowes’s period saga opens on 12 September, with scenes familiar to viewers worldwide. Many of them filmed in Mortlake.

the story works, who are based at the Stag Brewery, said on Instagram,

We’re especially proud that a large part of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale was filmed within the soundstages at the story works in Mortlake.

Even more special was seeing how many of the cast and crew came from our local community — bringing their craft and creativity to a story beloved across the globe.

the story works remain the only tenant on the Stag Brewery site not yet given notice to vacate. It is waiting to hear whether Disney will commission a second series of A Thousand Blows, with a decision expected in January, according to the Mortlake Brewery Community Group.

If the £1.3billion redevelopment proceeds as planned, the studio will make way for 1,068 homes, a secondary school for 1,200 pupils, shops, offices and nine acres of green space. Developers do not expect construction to begin for at least 18 months, but the direction is clear.

Notes & thoughts

The Stag Brewery Regeneration proposal continues to provoke mixed emotions.

Watching the move's trailer at the Olympic Cinema, drove home what closure would mean. Mortlake would lose its only large-scale creative employer. the story works covers 22 acres, with two sound stages and full production facilities. The other local creative businesses are excellent but much smaller - the OSO Arts Centre, the Bull’s Head jazz club, Olympic Studios, Barnes Atelier and Podcast Room. And they are all in Barnes.

You have to go back more than three centuries for Mortlake’s last globally recognised creative industry. The Mortlake Tapestry Works, founded in 1619, produced pieces that adorned royal palaces until it fell into decline in the 1660s and finally closed in 1703. All that survives on the site is a plaque marking the site of the Lower Dutch House, one of the former buildings of the Tapestry Works.

I admit to bias given my career in one of the world’s largest story factories. But there's more to it than that. The area is losing a large industrial business, one that connects with a rich hinterland of smaller companies and freelancers across south west London. And this in a sector, one of only eight, the UK Government has prioritised for its potential for growth.

And all this goes for what?

Another 1,000 homes is welcome given the housing shortage in London and beyond. But what the area needed was more affordable homes. The Stag Brewery Development is currently planning on providing 65 ‘affordable homes’, about 7.5 per cent of the total. This figure was approved on appeal, with the planning inspector concluding this was the ‘maximum reasonable provision’ for the site, given the financial constraints.

Here’s hoping the developer’s find an imaginative way of marking the site’s media and more importantly, brewing heritage. Something more than a grey granite plaque.