Stansborough Experience closes its doors...

Not good news today - Hutt Valley's local newspaper The Hutt News reports that LOTR's textiles creators Stansborough is closing its doors to tourists. Apparently the lack of visitors are forcing it to reconsider their priorities. It looks like the parent company Stansborough Fibres is staying but the huge and incredibly noise looms are looking for smaller, less expensive premises.

Stansborough were the people who created material for Ngila Dickson's fantastic elven cloaks that the fellowship receives from Galadriel when they depart Loth-lorien. I think they also provided the beautiful cloaks that Gandalf wears.

Apart from LOTR, Stansborough did work for the first two Narnia movies, the movie Waterhorse, the TV Series Kidnapped, the awesome vampire flick 30 Days Of Night, and Avatar, as well as a slew of others that they're not allowed to talk about yet.

They were also picked to be used for The Hobbit - let's hope that's still going ahead!


I have been to visit them several times, sometimes with paying guests, sometimes with family - it was always a great experience, and it was easy to see they truly loved what they were doing.

Barry Eldridge with one of the 100 year old looms, creating elven cloak. The looms were incredibly noisy. (click on photo for larger image)

A closeup of the Elven textile as it comes off the loom. Already you can see the incredible detail woven into the material. Although it looks quite coarse, it's actually very soft, but quite hardwearing. (click on photo for larger image)

The newspaper article also reports that the will be a "massive garage sale of fabrics", this Saturday the 11th of September, at 100 Hutt Park Rd (Seaview), from 8am till 3pm.

Incidentally, the movie's cloaks are still available from them, online.

Merry and Pippin return to Loth-Lorien?

Warning : this is a human interest story, and may contain kittens. You were warned.

I'd love to give you some actual news, but the studios are a bit silent at the moment, and we're stuck with "fireman rescues kitten from tree" stories.


Last week I took a group around the region on a LOTR tour, and discovered that there are new tennants at Loth-Lorien. It appears that the owners of the gardens at Fernside (the property where Peter Jackson filmed the Loth-Lorien scenes as well as the Gladden Fields scenes where Smeagol strangles Deagol) have obtained two kittens. They were incredibly friendly (unless you're a butterfly), and followed us all around the property, right from the carpark through the gardens, around the lake, and back to the car again. All up, I would estimate at least a couple of hundred meters.

Note the bridge in the background - you'll see the same bridge in the Fellowship Of The Rings, for instance where Legolas tells Merry and Pippin, already in the boat, that "a small bite of Lembas will fill the stomach of a grown man", as the two are picking their teeth clean of a good second breakfast.


Anyway, enjoy the pic, in liue of actual news. If nothing else, it may reassure you that I'm still here. :)

  - Jack

Update on Lothlorien Bridge - work is completed.

It know it looks like I've been a lazy little blogger these last few weeks, but in fact quite the reverse is true - I've been a bit busy with tours lately (or more accurately, I've been run off my feet with tours lately), and haven't had a chance to do much of anything else at all.

Apart from the already crazy busy week, I got called in for tours from the first of the (expected 52!) cruise ships which came into Wellington last Saturday, so I didn't have much of a weekend either! All good fun though, and I met up with some great folks off the big boat. The weather wasn't great but we managed to avoid the worst of it by strategically rearranging the order of the location stops around the region, and the hot chocolates at the morning tea location certainly helped keep the spirits up!


I do have a quick update to report on the storm-damaged Lothlorien bridge though - it has been completely rebuilt, and all work has been finished.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like the damage was covered by insurance since the bridge was not a "vital structure" (I know a few LOTR fans who would happily argue that point!), but the good folks at Fernside have just jumped ahead and rebuilt it regardless - and a big thanks to them all from myself, and everyone reading this, I'm sure!

  - Jack M.

Work has started on the bridge at Lothlorien (updated)

I visited the Lothlorien location last week and was delighted to see the reconstruction work has begun on the bridge. One contractor estimated that the bridge should be completely finished before the end of September, in fact!

No photos, I'm afraid - I didn't have a camera with me, and it's close to an hour drive. Hopefully later this week (my next visit will be on Tuesday).


Update: It's Tuesday night, I've just come back from (amongst other places) Lothlorien, and although I forgot my main camera again, I did take a lo-res one on my mobile phone. It'll do until I get a better one...

As you can see, the engineer is still hard at work - the struts have been restored, the main beams have been put back on, and the floor is halfway through being restored as well. After this, the bannisters, and a new paint job, and it should be back in no time.


  - Jack

Lothlorien update

It's been a pretty quiet sort of a week - not a lot to report. I suspect all the big guns are still recovering from San Diego's ComicCon, and perhaps dealing with the premiere of District 9, which was screened last night at the Park Road Post Production facilities in Miramar, and tonight at the Embassy Theatre (the same place that had the ROTK premiere on Dec 1, 2003) before going on general release.

One thing I did hear though, was that the destroyed bridge at Lothlorien will undergo its repairs starting from next week. It looks like we're going to have an identical bridge again!



As you can see, the support struts are still standing (although a bit crooked), and the offending tree has been completely removed. We have started returning to Fernside (which also doubled as the Gladden Fields) again a little while ago ago, so if you were holding off visiting until it opened again - wait no more, our operators are standing by to take your call! :)


I'll go in next week with a camera when the repairs start, so you can all see the progress as it happens.

- Jack M.

Lothlorien open again, but...

The Lord Of The Rings filming location of Lothlorien, located just outside Featherston in the Wairarapa region, has reopened again after the storm damage has been assessed (see my earlier post on Sunday May the 17th).

The bridge, after the movie but before the storm

Apparently the tree that has crushed the bridge has been removed, and the bridge remains crushed but they're working hard on repairing the damage. Things aren't quite back to normal but at least the safety of our guests can be maintained again.

Not a lot else to say since I haven't seen it myself yet, but I'm due to visit with a group this coming Sunday the 14th of June - I hope to get a better idea of the situation, and possibly some photos then.

NB - although the location has been reopened, the privately owned location is not open to the general public. The best way to see it is to take Flat Earth's full day Extended LOTR tour, which visits it.

- Jack M.

Lothlorien Bridge destroyed

The big news after the storm last week was that the newly-restored bridge at Fernside was pretty much completely destroyed by a falling tree.



One of several trees in fact - in total, five separate trees on the property came down in the storm. From the photo it looks more like it's been precariously placed on the bridge rather than crashing down on it.

Most of last year, the property was off-limits to visitors as the new owners drained the lake and refurbished the bridge, which had just been completed. I took this photo of it at the time:




In the movies, the bridge looked more elvish of course - check this one instead.


The bridge was pretty unique in Middle-earth terms - it was allegedly the only man-made object to appear in LOTR, that existed before the movie was made. Everything else (around 45,000 props or so) was custom-made by the Weta Workshop, or carefully digitised by Weta Digital.


For the foreseeable future, my tours won't be visiting the location due to the obvious safety concerns. Watch this space for updates.