ROOKERY NOOK

GB
1930
1hr 30mins
Dir: Tom Walls
Starring: Ralph Lynn and Winifred Shotter

A man tries to hide a runaway girl from his wife and mother-in-law

This farce is a screen adaptation of the original 1926 Aldwych farce of the same title by Ben Travers, who in turn had based it on his own novel of 1923. Rookery Nook was very successful at the box office, becoming the most popular British movie of 1930. The film features a very rare shot of Smallford for Colney Heath station on the Hatfield-St Albans branch, a route which closed throughout to passengers on 1st October 1951. The scene features a train of Gresley teak corridor coaches arriving behind LNER N7/2 Class 0-6-2T No.2641, only two years old at the time.

Although the film now appears almost impossible to get ahold of the railway footage, thankfully, is available on youtube. Here we see LNER N7/2 Class 0-6-2T No.2641 arriving into Smallford for Colney Heath. The sign top right suggests that the station is playing the part of a place name beginning in ‘Chum??’.
However, in the brief platform scene that follows we see a part of the actual station sign. The station closed on 1st October 1951.