Would you let Cybermen smash up your windows?

Wales Online
How would you fancy spending a few days with Doctor Who, Catherine Tate or the cast and crew of Gavin and Stacey? Abbie Wightwick talks to people who’ve turned their homes into the unlikely stars of the small screen

WHEN he saw Cybermen smash through his grade one listed house, Rhodri Traherne’s heart missed a beat.

For the first time he wondered whether it had been sensible to rent his home in the Vale of Glamorgan to the makers of Doctor Who.

Standing beside his wife, Annabelle, he watched as Cybermen crashed through three 12ft by 4ft windows of the house that had been in his family for 200 years.

They left silver paint marks as they scuffed their way through doors meant for 19th century landed gentry and crowded cellar passageways.

Rhodri, who runs a property and farming businesses, is just one of a growing band of people renting their homes to film and TV companies.

With everything from big name productions to soaps and feature films being made in Wales, location scouts are increasingly on the look out for ordinary houses as well as the more unusual.

Gavin and Stacey and Pobol y Cwm are all filmed in South Wales terraces and suburbs; Vale of Glamorgan woodland was used for the BBC children’s drama Merlin, a lake in Pentyrch and Caerphilly Castle are used for Young Dracula and Torchwood is made in and around Cardiff.
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