VCT Filming: Jericho
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Jericho is an ITV 8 part drama about life in the shanty town of Jericho, filmed in June 2015, starring Jessica Raine, Hans Matheson and Clarke Peters.
Set in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1870s, the
drama focuses upon the shanty town of Jericho, home to a community that will
live, thrive and die in the shadow of the viaduct they have been brought
together to build.
Rough, rustic and remote, yet with a wild west, carnival atmosphere, Jericho
is a community of pioneers, settlers and outcasts, people with secrets to hide
and those looking to start again.
One of the central characters is Annie Quaintain, played by Jessica Raine
(Fortitude, Wolf Hall, Call the Midwife), a woman who refuses to let tragedy
define her. Shattered by her husband’s death and penniless as he has gambled
away everything they owned, Annie is turfed out of her home and shunned by
former friends and neighbours. Together with her two teenage children, Annie
leaves for Jericho in the hopes of re-building their lives.
Disembarking from the train at the end of the line, they carry their meagre
possessions across a wild terrain. As they reach the brow of a hill a
sprawling collection of awnings and huts, bustling with life, lies before
them. Beyond that, rising up from the floor of the valley the first two arches
of a magnificent railway viaduct teeming with muscled workers. The
backbreaking work looks surprisingly majestic as they blast the foundations
for the next two arches.
VCT's Sir Berkeley was repainted in black specifically for this production. Railway scenes were shot at Embsay and set against the background of the S&C. The rest of the film was shot at the Colne Valley museum at Golcar, and in a special set built in a quarry near Huddersfield.