“I Helped to Build Hogwarts”

Watching Harry Potter films has become as much of a Christmas tradition as roast turkey and mince pies.

 

In fact, a legion of loyal wizarding fans have created a movement each Christmas Eve to begin watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone at exactly 10:32:59pm. All being well, this leads to Harry’s beloved best friend Ron, wishing him a ‘Happy Christmas’ as the clock strikes midnight, ushering in Christmas Day.

 

Whilst LWC Porter, John Bee may not count himself among the legions of dedicated followers scrabbling for the remote control late on Christmas Eve, he is able to watch the Harry Potter films with a vested interest.

 

Long before he found himself in the 1200 and over the space of a decade, John worked on 14 different feature films, including five of the Harry Potter movies.

 

“I was a plasterer’s labourer and stagehand,” he explains. “So I made sure that everyone had the materials they needed to build the sets. You’re mixing plaster all day long, moving sets from one area to another and building different stages. The carpenters go in and build the skins, then the plasterers arrive to put plaster casts on the walls to create maybe a castle, or a staircase. After that, the painters come in. You can be working on something for two or three weeks and it’s in a film for two seconds.”

 

When you consider the host of films that John has worked on, even if his handiwork features on-screen for a matter of seconds, chances are it’s been viewed by millions.

 

“I helped to build the central staircase of Hogwarts,” he nonchalantly adds. “And the phoenix in Dumbledore’s room. At the end of each movie, it all got taken down, cut into movable pieces and stored in a big hangar. When the next film came along and you needed Hagrid’s Hut for instance, you’d go back in and find it, to piece it back together. It was then the job of the plasterers to do all of the joins.”

 

“I helped to build the Batcave in Batman… I’ve even got a Gotham City manhole cover in my garage.”

— John Bee

 

John’s ten-year career in the film industry began with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and ended with Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe. In between, he also helped to build sets for the likes of Batman Begins, The Bourne Ultimatum, Mamma Mia, Skyfall and Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie.

 

“I helped to build the Batcave in Batman,” John adds as an afterthought. “I’ve even got a Gotham City manhole cover in my garage.

 

“We built a cottage for the fairies in Maleficent and a proper thatcher came in to build the thatched roof from scratch. He was there for weeks building this thing and it had a thatched bird at one end. I’ve got it in the garage. It’s lost its legs and its beak but it’s still there.”

 

John worked at some of the UK’s most prestigious film studios during his time. From Pinewood to Shepperton and Leavesden. But it started to come to an end with a writer’s strike. “I was working on Robin Hood at the time,” John points out. “We were there for about a week and then it got closed down for a while. I didn’t have any work, so I had to do delivery driving. When it all started again, it began to get quieter and the gaps between films got longer. It used to only be a couple of weeks or a month. You couldn’t have holidays at the peak of it. When my youngest was born, I only took a week off.”

 

When asked if he enjoyed his decade-long dalliance with the silver screen, John broadly grins. “It was fantastic,” he admits.

 

He goes on to tell stories of his time on Harry Potter sets: building corridors filled with spiders, setting up knights on bridges and building a jetty at Virginia Water. “It was in the scene where they’re rowing a boat across to the school. We built it in the middle of winter, we were up to our necks in water trying to keep this plaster dry.”

 

John cites his favourite film to work on as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. “There’s a whole street that strips apart and another house comes up,” he explains. “We built that entire street, with a park and railings… everything. Because we then worked on the Sherlock Holmes films, we used the same street – so it was up for four or five years, with all the slabs and the cobbles.”

 

These days, John is more familiar with the rolling fields and tree-lined paths of the 1200. Among his many duties, he brings pupils to and from College (who doubtless have no idea that the same hands driving them, have crafted a Hogwarts staircase). He’s traded his moving duties on-set for delivering supplies around LWC’s vast site. But look carefully at the closing credits to these films and you’ll see him immortalised on-screen forever.

 

“We once went on a tour at Harry Potter World,” he laughs. “There was a film showing how they built the Great Hall and I realised that I was in it!”