Heydon

Heydon Hall

Heydon Church

The village and the hall have been a favourite location for film and TV productions for many years. It has hosted Weavers Green - an early Anglia TV soap opera, The Grotesque - a film starring Sting, The Moonstone, Love on a Branch Line, The Peppermint Pig, Vanity Fair, Backs to the Land and The Woman in White. But it is perhaps best known for providing some of the main locations in Joseph Losey's The Go Between (1970). The Maudsley family attend church in Heydon and after the service file out of the side gate onto the village green. A cottage on the village green (see below) was frequently used as a background shot and for the final scene where the elderly Leo and Marian discuss the past.

Cottage used in The Go-Between

The village, with its historic buildings, and lack of through traffic makes an ideal country filmset. The newest building in the village is the Queen Victoria commemorative well which was built in 1887.

Heydon has previously won the Norfolk best-kept village competition for two years running. The Hall, which is the home of the Bulwer Long family, can boast Lord Lytton as a member. He was a novelist who wrote under the pseudonym of Bulwer Lytton and is best known for The Last Days of Pompei. The stone boars, which are situated on the front lawn of the hall, are thought to be similar to those found in the ruins of Pompei. The hall was originally built in 1582 by Henry Dynne.

The TV script writer Johnny Byrne lived in Heydon in a cottage next to the Earle Arms pub. He was involved with many well known series including All Creatures Great and Small, Space 1999, Doctor Who and Heartbeat. He was a regular reader of the Eastern Daily Press and admitted that many of his script ideas were drawn from Norfolk life. He also modelled James Herriot's wife Helen on his own wife Sandy. Byrne died in 2008 and is buried in the village churchyard.