Helen George on the Call the Midwife Christmas – in the Outer Hebrides…
Claire Webb - 3 December 2019
This Christmas the midwives and sisters of Nonnatus House are swapping the gritty streets of London’s East End for one of the wildest corners of Britain. In the festive special of Call the Midwife, Mother Mildred and her gaggle of nurses and nuns set sail for a Scottish island to help a community with no access to medical care and limited water and electricity. So, last March, the cast and crew decamped to the Outer Hebrides for a fortnight to film the episode.
“It’s an amazing place,” says Helen George, who plays Trixie Franklin. “The scenery was so beautiful and like nothing else; it’s like being on another planet. On our drive to work in the mornings, we would see at least five stags and a couple of eagles, and by the end we were blasé about it – ‘Oh yeah, there’s another couple of eagles.’ It was incredible, and people were so welcoming.”
Also known as the Western Isles or, in Gaelic, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, the Outer Hebrides is a string of islands scattered off the north west of Scotland. The Christmas special was filmed on the biggest and most northerly of them, Lewis and Harris. It’s actually two islands, joined by a sliver of land: Lewis is much larger, mostly flat and has lots of small lochs and the only town, Stornoway; while Harris has rugged hills, white sand beaches in the west and an east coast pocked by miniature fjords – it stood in for Jupiter in the film 2001: a Space Odyssey.
As the Outer Hebrides is exposed to the full might of the Atlantic’s storms, the weather can be as wild as the landscape, and the actors didn’t escape the wind and rain. “We shot a lot of outdoor scenes to make the most of that amazing scenery,” says George. “We really enjoyed it, but it was so cold! I wore a lot of long johns.
Filming took place all over the island and at several historic landmarks, including a church that dates back to the early 16th century, when Harris was a territory of Skye’s fearsome MacLeod clan. St Clement’s was founded by the eighth MacLeod clan chief, Alasdair the Humpbacked, who lived there as a monk in his latter years. The church is adorned with remarkable carvings of stags and Hebridean boats, and Alasdair’s elaborate tomb can be seen in the recess.
Viewers will also see the thatched cottages of Gearrannan Blackhouse Village, a restored crofting village on the west coast of Lewis where humans and livestock used to live together. A few of its squat, dry-stone houses are now self-catering accommodation kitted out with mod cons, while the rest are open so visitors can see how crofters used to live and watch Harris Tweed – the island’s famous cloth – being woven.
The actors stayed in more luxurious lodgings: a Victorian castle overlooking the beaches of South Harris. “It was incredible, but we all freaked out that it was haunted and didn’t get much sleep at first!” says George. “But it’s always lovely when the cast get to go away because we bond. You eat dinner together and have a drink – it’s really fun. We had one really special night when Cliff Parisi, who plays Fred Buckle, brought in a bagpiper to dinner and it was so magical.”
“It’s an amazing place,” says Helen George, who plays Trixie Franklin. “The scenery was so beautiful and like nothing else; it’s like being on another planet. On our drive to work in the mornings, we would see at least five stags and a couple of eagles, and by the end we were blasé about it – ‘Oh yeah, there’s another couple of eagles.’ It was incredible, and people were so welcoming.”
Also known as the Western Isles or, in Gaelic, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, the Outer Hebrides is a string of islands scattered off the north west of Scotland. The Christmas special was filmed on the biggest and most northerly of them, Lewis and Harris. It’s actually two islands, joined by a sliver of land: Lewis is much larger, mostly flat and has lots of small lochs and the only town, Stornoway; while Harris has rugged hills, white sand beaches in the west and an east coast pocked by miniature fjords – it stood in for Jupiter in the film 2001: a Space Odyssey.
As the Outer Hebrides is exposed to the full might of the Atlantic’s storms, the weather can be as wild as the landscape, and the actors didn’t escape the wind and rain. “We shot a lot of outdoor scenes to make the most of that amazing scenery,” says George. “We really enjoyed it, but it was so cold! I wore a lot of long johns.
Filming took place all over the island and at several historic landmarks, including a church that dates back to the early 16th century, when Harris was a territory of Skye’s fearsome MacLeod clan. St Clement’s was founded by the eighth MacLeod clan chief, Alasdair the Humpbacked, who lived there as a monk in his latter years. The church is adorned with remarkable carvings of stags and Hebridean boats, and Alasdair’s elaborate tomb can be seen in the recess.
Viewers will also see the thatched cottages of Gearrannan Blackhouse Village, a restored crofting village on the west coast of Lewis where humans and livestock used to live together. A few of its squat, dry-stone houses are now self-catering accommodation kitted out with mod cons, while the rest are open so visitors can see how crofters used to live and watch Harris Tweed – the island’s famous cloth – being woven.
The actors stayed in more luxurious lodgings: a Victorian castle overlooking the beaches of South Harris. “It was incredible, but we all freaked out that it was haunted and didn’t get much sleep at first!” says George. “But it’s always lovely when the cast get to go away because we bond. You eat dinner together and have a drink – it’s really fun. We had one really special night when Cliff Parisi, who plays Fred Buckle, brought in a bagpiper to dinner and it was so magical.”