Welwyn Studios
| Company type | Film production facility |
|---|---|
| Industry | Film production |
| Founded | 1928 |
| Defunct | 1951 |
| Headquarters | Welwyn Garden City , England, United Kingdom |
Area served | United Kingdom |
Number of employees | 194 (1950) |
Welwyn Studios was a film production facility situated in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England, active between 1928 and 1950.
The studio was initially constructed by British Instructional Films and swiftly modified to accommodate sound film technology. It was subsequently purchased by British International Pictures, which became part of the Associated British Picture Corporation in 1933. Welwyn Studios functioned primarily as a location for producing supporting features and served as an auxiliary site for the larger Elstree Studios complex. Various independent film companies also made use of its facilities for their projects.
The development of local industry in Welwyn Garden City motivated the provision of the site under advantageous conditions to A.E. Bundy, who had taken over British Instructional Films from Sir Oswald Stoll. The availability of excess steel girders from Stoll’s expansion efforts at Surbiton Studios helped lower the expenses involved in constructing the studio. H. Bruce Woolfe, a producer renowned for his impactful World War I documentaries, played an influential role at Welwyn. The studio was at the forefront of British sound cinema innovation, featuring one of the earliest uses of back-projection in Battles of the Coronel and Falkland Islands. It also made significant contributions to educational filmmaking through Woolfe’s Secrets of Nature series and wartime films such as Tell England, directed by Anthony Asquith.
Among the notable films produced at Welwyn in later years were The Night Has Eyes (1942) with James Mason, Night Boat to Dublin (1945), Quiet Weekend (1946), Queen of Spades (1949), Cairo Road (1950) starring Eric Portman, No Place For Jennifer (1950) featuring Leo Genn, and Last Holiday (1950). Despite its achievements, the studio encountered difficulties for sound recording due to ambient noise from adjacent operations like the Nabisco shredded wheat factory and a nearby railway line. By 1950, out of a workforce numbering 194, 46 employees were relocated to Associated British Picture Corporation’s Elstree Studios. The three-stage complex was eventually sold to a tobacco firm in 1951.