South Coast of England Report - ANY Dad’s Army fan knows that this classic of all British sitcoms was set on the South Coast of England. But try to find the fictional Walmlngton~n-Sea there and you’ll be ahnost as hapless as Captain Mainwaring and his men. In fact, the cult comedy was filmed in and around Thetford in Norfolk, and the recent broadcast by the BBC of two ‘lost’ episodes is generating an interest in visiting those locations. The perfect starting point for a Dad’s Army recce is the Anchor Hotel in Thetford. The cast used to stay here and at the Bell Hotel, across the river; during filming, and the first scene of the first episode was filmed, in 1968, in what was the Anchor’s Norvic Room, but which is now the High Seas Restaurant.

ANY Dad’s Army fan knows that this classic of all British sitcoms was set on the South Coast of England. But try to find the fictional Walmlngton~n-Sea there and you’ll be ahnost as hapless as Captain Mainwaring and his men. In fact, the cult comedy was filmed in and around Thetford in Norfolk, and the recent broadcast by the BBC of two ‘lost’ episodes is generating an interest in visiting those locations. The perfect starting point for a Dad’s Army recce is the Anchor Hotel in Thetford. The cast used to stay here and at the Bell Hotel, across the river; during filming, and the first scene of the first episode was filmed, in 1968, in what was the Anchor’s Norvic Room, but which is now the High Seas Restaurant. The rare seafront scenes were shot in Lowestoft, in Suffolk, and Winterton, but Thetford was used repeatedly in the 80 episodes of Dad’s Army. It’s a compact town, bisected by two rivers, the Little Ouse and the Thet, with narrow streets of flint-fronted houses. I took a walk down Bridge Street to Newtown, where in one episode the orange-brick pre-War council houses formed the backdrop to a scene in which the platoon practised subterfuge cunningly disguised as dustbins, and down Bury Road to the derelict church of St Mary the Less.
It was in this churchyard that Corporal Jones undertook an obstacle course designed to prove he was fit enough to Aprivate’s~ progress to Dad’sremain in the platoon. Over the river is Nether Row, where he showed off his butcher’s van, newly converted as troop trans— port.

Nether Row’s terrace of fiatfronted cottages — renamed Percy Street on TV - were used countless times as a backdrop When a German paratrooper’s parachute got caught on the town hall clock, the warden Arm Forest via Brandon, whose lage station stood in for Wahnington’s. I headed for the Stanford Ba tie Area where, in July 19 iio,ooo ~ Wd~ cvd~L[dL”d troops could train in secret for the eventual invasion of Europe. The 500 or so niliabitants of six villages - Stanford, Buckenh Tofts, West Thfts, Langford, Th tington and Sturston - were di placed

TODAY; the villages are still marooned in a vast no-go area marked Danger on the map and, on the ground, with signs warning: ‘Army Training Area, No Admittance Without Permit’. Within the restricted zone the landscape has been preserved j unchanged for 60 years. In this ~ area, which you can enter only by prior arrangement, Dad’s Army’s military exercises were often filmed. At Buckenhani Thfts, Warden Hodges challenged the platoon to a cricket match and fielded his secret weapon, played by stood down here and had bottles chucked at him by Pike. I find Pike Lane - no relation to the ‘Stupid Boy’ - and go on into Guildhall Street. The Guildhall itself, a slightly eccentric Victorian building, became Walmington—on-Sea’s town hall. Mter lunch I drove north, on a die-straight road, through the pine plantations of Thetford DAD’S THE WORD: Thetford featured in many OT tne tsu episocies

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