The History of Hinxton Hall Trilogy

Between mid-2020 and 2021, I worked together with Wellcome Connecting Science on editing a short documentary series. This trilogy was about the Hinxton Hall estate, home to the Wellcome Genome Campus, the place where the human genome was first sequenced by passionate UK-based scientists.

As the editor, I was in charge of selecting the best moments of Hinxton Hall’s history, together with the director of the project, Colin Ramsay. I viewed all the interview rushes in order to select soundbites that would best fit the theme of each video. The most challenging, yet fascinating part, was searching for archive materials in order to enhance the experience of these films.

Because of the vastness of the estate’s history, we started off with the old times, from the days before the Domesday Book, all the way to the end of the Second World War. My favourite part of the video is the presentation of the Pompeiian Parlour. I had very much fun editing that part of the video!

The second video presents the “Blue Skies Science” that took place after the industrial revolution, when Tube Investments bought the estate. It was great to be able to interview people who used to work there during that period and have access to their personal archive of photos.

The trilogy culminates with what happened after the 90s, when the Wellcome Sanger Institute took over the estate. The video presents the process of sequencing the human genome, as well as the institute’s help in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is probably my favourite video out of all three, as it promotes free open access to scientific knowledge. I was so happy to discover John Sulston’s interviews in the Wellcome Collection in order to bring his words, and ultimately his values, to life in this short documentary.

Half a year after the project was finished, I finally had the chance to visit the place that inspired this trilogy. I was honoured to see our hard work showcased in the Hinxton Hall History exhibition. Below you can see a video of me enjoying the experience.

Overall, this was a lengthy and challenging project, but I am very proud to have been part of this process of archiving Hinxton Hall’s history and making it accessible to the general public.