THE SCENE SETTERS

Hidden away in a North Yorkshire village, you’ll find a business making huge stage sets for global audiences, from TV’s The Voice, to the Olympics and Trafalgar Square’s plinths

- Heather Dixon

If you have ever wondered how a giant fluorescent red lion appeared overnight in Trafalgar Square or the Olympic Rings on Tower Bridge, look no further than the tiny village of Tockwith, near York.

Behind the vast doors of three huge industrial hangars on the outskirts of the village is a world of extraordinary creativity, in which groundbreaking concepts are transformed into remarkable feats of design and engineering destined for prestigious events across the world.

Occupying more than 14,000 square meters of open space, these vast buildings house a team of some of the finest craftspeople and innovators in the UK, who spend months – sometimes years – developing jaw-dropping constructions for the entertainment, marketing, and sports industries.

Yet Stage One is probably one of the county’s best-kept secrets.

How many viewers of the TV series The Voice, for example, know the spectacular stage set was built and engineered right here in Yorkshire; that Stormzy’s ‘Rain Deck’ at the Brit Awards was a Tockwith innovation, or the 2012 Olympic cauldron – designed by Thomas Heatherwick – was engineered and constructed by the team that cultivates the seed of an idea into a forest of mechanical structures?

It would take an entire book to do justice to the wealth of projects and the extraordinary individuals behind them, as Stage One CEO Mark Johnson is quick to point out.

‘They are the people who make it happen,’ he says. ‘The success of each and every project is down to the people whose skills are second to none.’