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Oxford Tour...
Exterior con'd, pg 4
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 Tour
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Hotel façade
| | [035]: We have now walked out of the entrance archway, the
main entrance to the prison, to the area in front of the building, so the
view is of the hotel façade from the street—this gives the entrance some
sort of context in terms of the overall structure of the building. The
Larkhall entrance archway is on the left-hand side. Also, you can just make
out the roof of the two halves of G-wing behind the façade. (Sorry, the sun
was in an awkward position for this shot!) In Bad Girls of course we
don't ever get to see this full façade top to bottom, although we do get to
see the lower half of the building for the whole width of this shot and
slightly beyond—only it wouldn't be recognisable from this photo. The hotel
entrance has been altered to create the doorway that is rather different
from what was there in Bad Girls' time. |
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End of façade and Governor's House
| | [036]: This is the limit of what we see of the prison façade
in Bad Girls, or slightly more in fact. The most we ever see of the
Governor's House building is in S2 Ep2 [34:57], where we see part of the
side of the building to the extreme right of this photo. In Bad Girls
there was also a flight of steps leading up to a door, which would have been
on the left side of this photograph and is now the long plain window to the
above left of the silver vehicle [click on third, skinny thumbnail for
close-up]. We can see these stairs, the red door, and part of the
'Governor's House' behind the guard in the background when Karen drives up
to the guard booth and boom in S2 Ep1 [38:21]. |
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Hotel entrance/original main entrance to the prison
| | [037]: Moving left from the previous photo now—this is the
main entrance to the hotel and was originally the main entrance to the
prison. This part of the prison façade has changed substantially from when
Bad Girls was filmed there, when there was no access through here at
all. But you should recognise the buttresses on either side of the entrance;
we see this part of the building in S3 Ep15 [00:38], but we perhaps get a
better view of this area in the Extras on the S1 DVDs—Bad Girls in Oxford
[01:32], in which they are filming the sequence featured in the first
screenshot here and the first one below. You can see the area between the
buttresses flanking the hotel entrance, and also the bottom half of one of
the crosses that are carved into the stone above the entrance in this photo.
We get a better view of the carved crosses in a night shot in S3 Ep12
[28:49]. This was originally the main entrance to the prison, and it was
from a platform above the entrance that public hangings were carried out
until 1863—which is something to contemplate while sitting outside one of
the nearby restaurants, where one would have been afforded a full view of
proceedings! After the executions bodies would be whipped off to the
University for dissection and experimentation by anatomists—enough to make
you look twice at your liver paté! |
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Prison entrance and façade to hotel entrance
| | [038]: Scanning left now from the hotel entrance to what
would have been the main entrance to Larkhall. We see quite a lot of coming
and going from this parking area in front of the prison. It is to the right
of this entrance archway that Helen would usually have parked her car as we
see in S3 Ep15 [01:06]. We also get a good idea of how the hotel entrance
façade has changed when we see Karen arrive in S2 Ep1 [38:33]: she parks
next to Simon who is parked where Helen parked in the first screenshot, and
Helen is parked to his right between the two buttresses that now flank the
hotel entrance. In S3 Ep11 [26:59] in a view that encompasses the whole
façade that we have just looked at, we see a shot of the prison at night,
extending from where we are now at the entrance archway back to the side
windows of the Governor's House building. |
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New building and prison entrance |
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| [039]: Other than the familiar entrance archway,
this is an area that has changed so substantially from the time of Bad
Girls, as to be virtually unrecognisable. This new-build donut café and
its large adjacent delivery door are where the little guard-booth and the
boom that we see quite frequently in Bad Girls would have been. This
new building means that there is no longer any parking area or access to the
main entrance gate from the road that would have led up to the little
guard-booth, the direction Helen drove in from with her dodgy mascara in the
very first episode; it is all hidden behind a large wooden gateway, which
you can see to the left of the main entrance archway in the photograph. In
S3 Ep10 [00:33] we see the newly-promoted Helen driving towards her parking
space, having come past the guard-booth and boom, which we get a good view
of in S3 Ep7 [43:28] and S2 Ep3 [00:09]. You can get an idea of the area
that was behind this wooden gateway in S3 Ep3 [12:09] when we see Monica
driving out past the boom. This also means that the parking area where
Lauren met Josh and Jessie Devlin has made way for the donut shop and the
gateway. For a view of what the prison façade looked like beyond the
entrance archway see S3 Ep 12 [44:01]. |
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Bad Girls' Officers' Mess in County Hall building
| | [040]: From a position facing the façade, we turn to our
left to see the Officers' Mess in what was actually the County Hall
Building. The structure to the left is what was originally the County Court
Building, and there used to be an underground tunnel leading directly from
the dock into the prison. The white door in the centre is the doorway to
what, in Bad Girls, was the Officers' Mess. You see Fenner stagger
down these stairs in S2 Ep11 [31:03]; there is an Officers' Mess sign on the
wall, on the left-hand side of the building. We also see these stairs and
doorway in S2 Ep11 [18:15]. It is because of this close proximity of the
Officers' Mess to the entrance archway, that in S2 Ep13 Ken shouts out the
main entrance gate for Mike to get him a drink from Bodybag's party, while
"Nurse Ford" is waiting to be signed out from the guard room. |
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