A Lake District hotel is celebrating its connections to an iconic 1940s movie by playing host to the daughter of one of its stars.
The classic Brief Encounter was mainly filmed in Carnforth and its star, Dame Celia Johnson, stayed at Windermere’s Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa.
Now her daughter Lucy Fleming has followed in her footsteps with the hotel as a staging post for her play focusing on the wartime letters exchanged between her parents.
Posting Letters to the Moon is at Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake, with readings of touching and amusing letters from Celia to her husband Peter Fleming – brother of James Bond creator Ian Fleming – telling of her experiences during the war.
To mark the occasion, a framed and inscribed copy of a Brief Encounter movie poster was presented to Lucy and her husband, the actor Simon Williams, with the picture to be mounted in the hotel as a permanent reminder of her mother’s stay there.
Lucy said: “It’s been lovely for Low Wood Bay to be involved in our plans to bring Posting Letters to the Moon to Cumbria, and to explore the venue’s connections with Brief Encounter.
“My mother very much enjoyed staying at the hotel during the filming of the movie and travelling to Carnforth each day in a Rolls-Royce, so it’s a joy to follow in her footsteps.”
Mark Needham, of English Lakes Hotels Resorts & Venues, added: “Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa has some historic connections with film-making but none
so iconic as Brief Encounter.
“Celia Johnson described the hotel and recalls a fire being made up in her room and the provision of a late breakfast after filming throughout the night. She was ferried each day to Carnforth station and also for a day’s filming up in the Langdale Valley for one of the most famous scenes in the movie at Middle Fell Bridge, Dungeon Ghyll.”
