Devon drama
The wild, romantic coast of Devon’s Hartland Peninsula makes a spectacular stage-set for a new screen adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s gothic novel Rebecca. Nicola Smith is swept away by the area’s rugged beauty
With its long sandy beaches, yawning valleys and rugged, towering cliffs, the landscape of North Devon’s Hartland
Peninsula is alive with drama.
Little wonder that the area has starred in film productions for many years, the latest of which is Daphne du Maurier’s haunting gothic tale Rebecca, due to screen on Netflix this autumn.
Du Maurier’s novel is set in the dark and foreboding Cornish estate of Manderley, where young Mrs de Winter is tormented by reminders of her new husband’s late wife, the eponymous Rebecca. It was famously adapted for film in 1940 by Alfred Hitchcock and starred Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, picking up Academy Awards for best picture and best cinematography. The new Netflix film stars Lily James and Armie Hammer, while Kristin Scott-Thomas and Keeley Hawes add to a luminous line-up.
The Hartland Peninsula may lie across the border from Cornwall, in Devon, but it is well cast as a filming location, providing a fitting backdrop for Rebecca’s suspenseful coastal drama during the shoot last summer.
ACTION-PACKED LANDSCAPE
With its labyrinth of winding lanes, miles of ancient bridleways, vast open moors and awe-inspiring coastline of deserted beaches and mighty granite cliffs, the landscape is also intensely rewarding to explore.
An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), the Hartland Peninsula is generally agreed to stretch from the pretty fishing village of Clovelly, with its steep cobbled streets and 14th-century quayside, to Welcombe on the Cornish border, with its hidden beach and towering waterfall crashing to the sea.
Many more coastal waterfalls tumble to the sea from the area’s hanging valleys, created by streams running from moorland to shore. One of the best known is Speke’s Mill Mouth, a dramatic cascade pitching some 15m to the rocky beach below. At the top is grassland – a riot of sea pink from May to September – over which peregrines and kestrels hunt their prey. Just 100m away is Docton Mill Gardens and Tea Room (doctonmill.co.uk), a working mill with a nine-acre garden, where 20,000 narcissi bloom spectacularly in springtime.
QUAY FEATURE
Just south of Hartland Point lies Hartland Quay, the 16th-century harbour once used to import lime, slate and coal across the Bristol Channel from Wales, while Devon’s products, such as barley and oats, were shipped out.
One of the most chilling scenes from du Maurier’s 1938 novel was filmed here, as Rebecca’s sunken boat is recovered from the sea at dawn, revealing its longsubmerged secrets.
As du Maurier wrote: “I pictured them all down there in the bay, and the little dark hull of the boat rising slowly to the surface, sodden, dripping, the grass-green seaweed and shells clinging to her sides.”
To film this atmospheric scene, tracks were laid from the quay into the sea and huge lighting rigs were built to illuminate the set.