Stevenage Old Town, Herts, UK - Serious Charge (1959) - Movie Locations on Waymarking.com

In 1959 the film Serious Charge was produced which introduced Cliff Richard to the silver screen. Whilst Cliff did very little acting in the film, it did provide a launch vehicle for the song “Livin’ Doll.” In the film Cliff plays a delinquent and “misunderstood” rocker called Curly. Other worthies who had walk on parts, but were not mentioned in the credits, are Jess Conrad, Brian Forbes and Nannette Newman.

For its day the film was controversial for the subject matter covered. The story revolves around a group of rowdy local rockers and the single vicar of the parish. The vicar crosses swords with one of the rockers over the death of the rocker’s pregnant girlfriend and the rocker takes revenge by accusing the vicar of making improper advances to him at the Vicarage. The vicar is eventually saved by a female church worker, whose advances the vicar rejects early on in the film. Bold in its day and still very watchable today.

All the outside location shots were shot in the Old Town area of Stevenage. It is amazing to see the changes between today’s High Street and that of 1959. In the film the town is called Benington to give Stevenage anonymity. Ironic that Benington is a village only a few miles from Stevenage.

The clips for this waymark are as follows

Clip 1: The Methodist Chapel on the High St was used as the location for the church youth club.
Clip 2 & 3 : The Post Office, now a camera shop
Clip 4 & 5 : Springfield House was used as the location of the Vicarage
Clip 6 : White Hart public house on the High St
Clip 7 : The Coop, now two separate shops
Clip 8 : The upper High St
Clip 9 & 10 : The Bowling Green outside Springfield House

Movie or TV Show: Serious Charge Year Released or First Aired: 1,959.00 IMDB Link: [Web Link]

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log User Rating   07/23/2011 Ed2Ed visited it