Glass Marbles
Marbles made of small pebbles or with balls of natural clay date back to pre-historic times. The Romans used real marble - hence the name - but it was only as recently as the 18th century in Venice that glass was first used. It was in the mid-19th century that the German invention of a tool called "marble scissors" (which you can see being used in the film) made the production of glass marbles for sale to the public fast enough to be an economic proposition.
Nowadays, most marble manufacturing is done by machine, of course; but the glass marbles we see being made are produced in the traditional way by skilled glass-blowers and craftsmen. It is thought that there are only three places in the world where this still happens, so we were very proud to have filmed at one of them!
"House of Marbles" was established in 1973 by a man who (so we were told) is "nuts about marbles" - a fact which comes as no surprise after you've seen the enormous stock of glass marbles and the extraordinary "marble runs" inside. It is situated on the site of the old Bovey Pottery Company, and its glass furnaces and workshops are within the old kiln buildings whose magnificent chimneys can be seen in the film.
The town we know today as Bovey Tracey used to be known as "South Bovey" and had a name-change forced on it when the manor of Bovey came under the ownership of the French de Tracey family, who settled in the area after the Norman conquest of 1066. Their most infamous member was William de Tracey, who was one of the four knights responsible for the brutal assassination of Archbishop Thomas-a-Becket at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.
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Production Notes
Locations:
House of Marbles, Bovey Tracey, Devon.