The Time David Lean created an Arabian Desert in Essex

Peter O’Toole blinked as he looked out over the desert.

Sand stretched out before him. It was majestic and beautiful.

In the distance he could make out a town – Aqaba. They would be filming the taking of Aqaba in the following week.

Dizzy, he sat down hard. He’d never seen anything like it in his life. It was a huge, magnificent Arabian desert, but if he turned around he could see the Britvic factory and a nice park, because he wasn’t in Saudi Arabia, he was in Chelmsford and David Lean had recreated an entire desert in the middle of Essex.

“Rubbish,” exclaimed David Lean, as he looked out over the Jordanian desert, “absolute rubbish. It will never work.”

His production manager was stunned.

“I was stunned,” said John Palmer, in a Wogan interview in 1964.

“The desert in Jordan was perfect. There was reasonably easy access, it looked like a desert, and it was peaceful.

“David was having none of it though. There was nowhere nearby to buy sandwiches, you couldn’t get a pint and they all spoke a funny language. We would not be filming in Jordan. He was clear.”

At a loss, Mr Palmer asked the directing legend where he planned to film the extensive desert scenes he had planned for his epic adaptation of Lawrence of Arabia.

“Essex, my dear boy,” smiled Lean, “we film in Essex.”

“It was an audacious plan,” remembered Mr Palmer.

“We would take all the land between Chelmsford and Brentwood – hundreds of square miles – and cover it with sand.

We imported the sand from the Great Desert in Romania, in fact we imported so much that it’s now known as the Great Beach of Romania.

We spread the sand across Essex, the village of Ingatestone doubled for Aqaba, and we had a thoroughly convincing Arabian desert a short commute from London with ready access to sandwiches, a nice pint and people who spoke English.

Peter O’Toole was amazed that they’d been able to create such a desert so close to home and, inspired by the Production management team’s job, went on to give the performance of his life as T. E. Lawrence.

The film would go on to become a classic and, when filming was finished, the production team cleared all the sand away, so much so that if you travelled to Chelmsford today you’d have no idea that there was once a desert there.

However, if to travel a little further to the village of Danbury, you’ll find the only full-sized mountain in Essex. Why? Because all the sand from David Lean’s makeshift desert was piled up outside Danbury with a view to shipping it back to Romania.

However, they never got round to it and now the beautiful mountain of Essex is one of the south-east’s most popular tourist spots.