This article is an account of when Hollywood turned Grover Road into a filming location for the 1962 controversial classic Lolita. It was written by Barry Hulin and was originally published by Oxhey Village Environment Group in the summer 2022 OVEG newsletter. The author’s words are unedited from the origination version. Footnotes with additional information are available after Barry’s article.
We would be interested to see historic photos of the Lilla Cottage. If you can help, please contact publicity@oveg.org.
Gill and I have lived in Oxhey Village since 1974. At the time we both worked for Royal Insurance Group in Clarendon Road and when looking for our first home it was during the fuel crisis when petrol was in short supply, so we decided to live as close to work as possible. Working from home was not an option in those days!
We moved into 2 Lilla Cottage over a bank holiday weekend using furniture we had scrounged from here, there and everywhere. We asked the vendors where they were moving to and were told “just around the corner.” Little did we know that whilst it was indeed around the corner it was actually next door! Our ‘two up, two down’ cottage was one of a pair with 1 Lilla Cottage next door. I have always understood that the builder who built a lot of Grover Road built these two cottages for himself and his son but this is unconfirmed.
Gill, me and our son Paul became very close to our neighbour at 1 Lilla Cottage, Mrs. Bramhill, but before too long in 1978 we were expecting our daughter Emma but only having two bedrooms we thought we would need a bigger house. This is where Mrs B came to the rescue – she did not want us to move away from the area and indeed nor did we. Mrs B’s friend Mrs Urlwin lived at the other end of the street at 91 and her son Chris wanted to move away but needed to find a smaller house for his mother. The idea was born that we swap houses with a suitable financial adjustment and that is what happened.
We moved in one week before Christmas in 1978. We knew little about the house, which was in a poor state but it did mean we could afford to buy it although it was some years before we could afford such luxuries as wallpaper. We subsequently learned that the house had featured in the controversial film Lolita, hence the Hollywood reference. A new neighbour, Peter gave us an old black and white photograph of the house the day it was filmed taken by his son.
The film director was Stanley Kubrick and whilst he was born in Manhattan he spent most of his life in England and lived in St Albans. He directed Lolita here and this was his first film produced entirely in England. In the film towards the end, the gloriously named lead character Humbert Humbert, played by James Mason, is seen driving around a mid-west town in America on his way to find Lolita played by Sue Lyon, when he eventually turns into Grover Road before parking and walking up to what is now our house.
I have recently found there is an archive at The University of The Arts in London, although I was not able to go and see it because of lockdown. However, I did learn that the location is documented and is referred to as ‘Lolita’s Shack’.
Many years after we moved in, our daughter Emma noticed a man taking photographs of the house. It was a man named Tony and it turned out that he was on the film crew of Lolita and had come back to have another look.
He kindly sent us a coffee table book ‘Stanley Kubrick – A life in Pictures’ by his wife Christiane Kubrick with a forward by Steven Spielberg. In it there is a great picture of Stanley and James walking away from the house deep in conversation. Our granddaughter Elizabeth made a rather good pencil drawing of the house as it appears in the film. Being a ‘book fiend’ I recently bought ‘A house through time‘ by David Olusoga and Melanie Backe-Hanson – highly recommended.
This has inspired me to research the history of our house and prompted me to write this article. If you have any information about it or even old photos of our house or Grover Road please do get in touch.
Barry Hulin
Summer 2022
Further information
The ‘Lolita’s Shack’ filming location, referenced in Barry’s article, is indeed noted in the stored in The University of The Arts London’s archive. However, the documents are not – at the time of writing – available to view online.
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