Location

The location that our thriller will be set in, will be at Sempringham Abbey, seen in the pictures below, we have chosen this location as we think it will be perfect for a thriller setting due to its isolation. It is a long way from the road, so we won't have the sound of cars in the background, and it is quite far out into the countryside so there won't be any people or houses in the shots. Also we can make it appear quite mysterious with the colours and shots that we use and get.

As well as being a good location due to the isolation of the church it also is a good location because of the extra features that the church offers, like the statues carved into it, this will be usefull for the shots of the man running, as short jump cuts back and forth from the statues to him running as if he is being watched. The stainglass windows in the chruch and the crosses, will also usefull as we can use them to have jump cuts back and forth to create tension by giving the audience a dramatic look into the location and giving it a darker and more menacing sense.

History

The story begins around 1082, like a fairy tale, when Sir Jocelin, a wealthy Norman knight, besotted with a beautiful village maiden from the Saxon village of Sempringham, married her. While pregnant with her first child she dreamed that, before he was born, the moon came down and settled in her lap, a sign of her child’s coming greatness. But the fairy tale almost ended in 1083 when their son, Gilbert, was born crippled. A future in the church seemed the likeliest place for such a child, and Gilbert’s parents sent him to France to be educated as a clerk in holy orders. According to the records of the time, Gilbert developed a goodness of heart and character and soon distinguished himself as a scholar.

Gilbert returned from France to Sempringham in 1115 and taught the children on his father’s estate, then spent nine years as clerk to the Bishop of Lincoln. He was ordained as a priest in 1129 and returned to serve in Sempringham’s church. Two years later, when his father died, he used his inheritance to start The Order of Sempringham, recruiting seven nuns. Over the next few years most of the inhabitants of the Saxon village joined the Order leaving an almost deserted village behind them. Thus its decline began.

Eighty years later Sempringham’s other famous resident, Gwenllian, the last Welsh princess, was imprisoned here by Edward I, king of England, who was determined to break the back of Welsh national resistance and remove any rallying point for them. After killing Gwenllian’s father, Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales, in a battle, he spirited baby Gwenllian away to Sempringham where she was kept prisoner at the Abbey. Buried on the Abbey grounds in 1137, her grave, too, is lost in history’s shifting sands.