Dylan’s movie love nest
WHAT to do if you come home to findKe ira Knight ley, Sienna Miller and Matthew Rhys cavorting in your bed? That was the question facing Marion Hutton when she returned from a shopping trip, having let her house in Tenby to a film company making The Edge Of Love, a biopic about Dylan Thomas.
‘I wasn’t allowed in the bedroom itself, of course,’ says Marion, 70, who worked in London before retiring to the Pembrokeshire resort. ‘ But I was allowed to join the rest of the crew in my bathroom where they were watching the proceedings on a monitor.
‘The bedroom was actually meant to be in Chelsea during the Blitz, and it would have been ideal but for one thing – the seagulls. Every time they squawked, the actors had to start again. At one stage, things were going so slowly that it looked as if they’d have to shoot the scene in a studio instead. In that case, they wanted to take my bed away for the sake of continuity!’
Fortunately, the 2008 film – about the love triangle involving Thomas (Matthew Rhys), his wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller) and his old flame Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley) – was finished on schedule.
Thomas had spent long periods of the war in Wales, so it made sense to shoot as much of the film there as possible.
For Marion, the experience of letting out her property was a success. She received £6,000 for two days of filming, although she allowed the crew access for a further five days so they could transform this light, high-ceilinged, Grade II listed house into a dark, bohemian garret.
‘They allowed me to keep some of the changes they made, including a window seat they built for a love scene between Keira and Cillian Murphy, who plays a British Army officer,’ says Marion.
‘The cast and crew drove here from Aberaeron every day and they were all lovely. I didn’t meet Keira but I had my picture taken with Sienna – she was charming.’
It was little wonder that the film’s location manager, Alex Gladstone, was so taken with Marion’s property, Lexden House. Although built in the 1840s, a decade after the Georgian period, it has a wealth of Georgian features, such as internal shutters, rustic floorboards and ornate ironwork on the terrace. The house was also used in the filming of the 1998 TV mini-series Vanity Fair.
Marion bought Lexden House in 1991 for £200,000 with her late husband, Tommy, a silk merchant. She had loved West Wales since visiting for holidays as a girl and later studying at Aberystwyth University. She and Tommy owned a holiday property in Tenby, but later decided they would like to live in the town permanently.
‘The house was in a terrible state,’ Marion recalls. ‘Apart from needing structural repairs, decoratively it was stuck in a 1970s time warp, with brown walls in the hall and a foul red carpet.’
THE Huttons spent another £ 200,000 on restoring t he house. Today you will not find a primped and perfect property – rather, it is bookish, full of beautiful art and antique furniture. The five-bedroom house boasts sea views and features a glorious Georgian staircase and American walnut doors. There is also a self-contained, one-bedroom flat in the basement.
In 2013, Marion allowed a pop-up cinema group, Films4Tenby, to use Lexden House for a showing of The Edge Of Love. The film buffs were fascinated to find the window seat where Keira had filmed her love scene still in place.
Marion is now selling up for £1.4 million because the house is far too big for her. However, locals will long remember her as the woman who brought the Hollywood stars to Tenby.