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Rise to the occasion: Gold Hill was an ideal backdrop for the Hovis ad
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The chance to own a piece of Hovis Hill, featured in Britain’s best-loved
television commercial, is likely to lure nostalgic house-hunters, says Max
Davidson.
The chances are you recognise the street in this picture. But you might not
realise why. It is Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset, and it was the setting
for one of the most famous British television adverts ever.
Remember that 1973 Hovis commercial starring a bread delivery boy pushing his
bike up a steep cobbled hill, with Dvoˇrák’s New World symphony throbbing in
the background? It was the cheesy voiceover, in a thick Mummerset accent,
that lodged in the memory. “Last on my round was Old Ma Peggotty’s house.
’Twas like taking bread to the top of the world.”
In 2006, the Hovis ad was voted viewers’ all-time favourite. Not, one
suspects, because people were mad about the wholesomeness of Hovis, but
because they were mad about the wholesome images of village life. Nothing
tugs as hard at the heartstrings as nostalgia.
Directed by Ridley Scott, who later found fame with Alien and Gladiator, the
ad evoked a forgotten England of morning mist and thatched roofs, an England
in which everyone had time to talk to one another and there was fresh-baked
bread on every table. It gave Shaftesbury the kind of publicity most towns
can only dream about.
Gold Hill had already been used as a movie location in John Schlesinger’s 1967
classic Far from the Madding Crowd, starring Julie Christie and Terence
Stamp. But Hovis took it to another level altogether as an
“I-know-that-street address” – good news for anyone lucky enough to own a
property there.
“The television ad will certainly give the property a lot of recognition,”
agrees Giles Wreford-Brown of the local agent Symonds & Sampson, which has
just put number 8 Gold Hill on the market for £360,000. “Perhaps it will
also add value, although it is too early to say. When the ad first came out,
people assumed it had been shot somewhere in the north of England. To find a
street like this in a town within commuting distance of London comes as a
nice surprise. It has helped make Gold Hill a much sought-after address in a
popular town.”
“Gold Hill was already known locally as Hovis Hill when I bought the cottage,” says Sue Keeling, who paid £55,000 for it in 1987. “Everyone remembered that ad.” She later sold it to her mother, who lived in the house until this January, when she moved into residential care.
For both women, it was a happy home, with rich associations. To the pleasures of living on a picture-postcard street were added the offbeat delights of owning a house on a part-time film set.
Where Ridley Scott had led, others followed. “People were always knocking on the door to ask if they could film the front door of our house,” says Sue. “Television production companies became part of street life. It made us appreciate how fortunate we were to live somewhere genuinely unique.”
The Grade II listed two-bedroom cottage, with a sloping wild garden at the back, is thought to date back to the 14th century. The building was then added to in the 17th and 20th centuries. Overlooking Blackmore Vale, with the beautiful Purbeck Hills shimmering in the distance, the dressed sandstone property would grace any town, even without the Hovis connection.
Number 8 is at the top of the steep, winding hill, which might deter some buyers. Yet the climb is worth it for the unspoilt panoramic view of one of England’s most distinctive landscapes – Hardy’s Wessex. Shaftesbury itself, thinly disguised as Shaston in Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d’Urbervilles, is on the very outer fringes of modern commuter-land. Only a very small proportion of the residents travel daily from nearby Gillingham to London’s Waterloo, which takes about two hours. But there are plenty of weekly commuters, and the town’s shops and cafés have a cosmopolitan sophistication.
You would think that fresh-baked bread would be a distant memory on Hovis Hill, and that the residents would order sliced loaves online, to be delivered to their doorstep in a supermarket van. Well, you would be wrong, certainly as far as number 8 is concerned. Until shortly before her mother moved out, Sue Keeling brought her a daily loaf of bread which she had baked herself.
With its crooked houses and cobblestones, Hovis Hill might seem like olde England, remote from the real world, but the passions that animate it are very much alive. For a romantic, it could just be the best address in Dorset.
8 Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset, is on the market for £360,000 with Symonds & Sampson (symondsandsampson.co.uk; 01258 473766)
“Gold Hill was already known locally as Hovis Hill when I bought the cottage,” says Sue Keeling, who paid £55,000 for it in 1987. “Everyone remembered that ad.” She later sold it to her mother, who lived in the house until this January, when she moved into residential care.
For both women, it was a happy home, with rich associations. To the pleasures of living on a picture-postcard street were added the offbeat delights of owning a house on a part-time film set.
Where Ridley Scott had led, others followed. “People were always knocking on the door to ask if they could film the front door of our house,” says Sue. “Television production companies became part of street life. It made us appreciate how fortunate we were to live somewhere genuinely unique.”
The Grade II listed two-bedroom cottage, with a sloping wild garden at the back, is thought to date back to the 14th century. The building was then added to in the 17th and 20th centuries. Overlooking Blackmore Vale, with the beautiful Purbeck Hills shimmering in the distance, the dressed sandstone property would grace any town, even without the Hovis connection.
Number 8 is at the top of the steep, winding hill, which might deter some buyers. Yet the climb is worth it for the unspoilt panoramic view of one of England’s most distinctive landscapes – Hardy’s Wessex. Shaftesbury itself, thinly disguised as Shaston in Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d’Urbervilles, is on the very outer fringes of modern commuter-land. Only a very small proportion of the residents travel daily from nearby Gillingham to London’s Waterloo, which takes about two hours. But there are plenty of weekly commuters, and the town’s shops and cafés have a cosmopolitan sophistication.
You would think that fresh-baked bread would be a distant memory on Hovis Hill, and that the residents would order sliced loaves online, to be delivered to their doorstep in a supermarket van. Well, you would be wrong, certainly as far as number 8 is concerned. Until shortly before her mother moved out, Sue Keeling brought her a daily loaf of bread which she had baked herself.
With its crooked houses and cobblestones, Hovis Hill might seem like olde England, remote from the real world, but the passions that animate it are very much alive. For a romantic, it could just be the best address in Dorset.
8 Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset, is on the market for £360,000 with Symonds & Sampson (symondsandsampson.co.uk; 01258 473766)
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The hill as featured in the famous Hovis ad Photo: PA
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The view from Hovis Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset
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| Hovis Hill also featured in Far from the Madding Crowd starring Julie Christie |
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