The Borders village linked to a movie classic

By Giancarlo RinaldiSouth Scotland reporter, BBC Scotland news website

Visitors to the rural Borders village of Birgham are greeted by a sign which will make film fans smile.

Alongside its greener gateway award, it proudly claims to be "Twinned with Bedford Falls".

That, as any connoisseur of black-and-white movies will tell you, is the fictional town in Frank Capra's famous feature It's A Wonderful Life.

But what links the little village with the Christmas classic starring James Stewart and Donna Reed?

Fiona Livingstone, of the Birgham Community Development Trust (BCDT), said it all started about a decade ago.

"For all that it's a small village, we have a lot of different clubs and stuff like that using the village hall which is very much part of the community along with the pub," she explained.

"One of the guys - his name is Dai Evans - agreed to run the the the film club and one of the requests that we got was for It's A Wonderful Life.

"It was generally shown, maybe not every year, but we we certainly showed it quite regularly, along with mulled wine and and mince pies and that kind of stuff."

It was a small enough step from that to putting up the twinning sign.

As with so many ideas, it was a chat in the pub "after a pint or two" that saw the project gather momentum.

Fiona credits Dai and another local resident - Gordon Robb - with organising the whole thing.

By December 2015, a group gathered at the entry to the village where the new sign took pride of place.

It was not originally intended to be anything other than a fairly short-term measure.

Fiona said: "It was only supposed to go up over the Christmas period, we fully expected the council to come back and say: 'Take it down.'

"They never did, so it's just been left."

As well as showing the film regularly, there was a fairly tenuous link to one of its stars - Henry Travers who played the guardian angel Clarence.

He was born some distance across the border at Prudhoe in Northumberland but lived for a time in Tweedmouth which is only about 18 miles (29km) away.

So, it is not entirely inconceivable that he might have visited Birgham at some point before embarking on his acting career.

Curiously enough, the village is not the only one in the Scottish Borders to boast a "twinning" with a fictional movie location either.

Further east, on the coast at St Abbs, they are proud to have stood in for New Asgard in the filming of Avengers: Endgame.

In 2019, they even put up a sign which also proclaimed their links.

Perhaps Birgham was a bit of a trendsetter for the Borders.

It's A Wonderful Life, of course, focuses on the importance of community as they rally round to help George Bailey - played by Stewart - after he falls to such a low ebb that he wishes he had never been born.

Fiona said that Birgham was definitely a place where the villagers looked out for one another.

"We have a terrific community spirit," she said.

"We've lived here for probably 30 years now - as long as my husband and I have ever lived anywhere.

"It was fantastic to bring the kids up and all the rest of it. It is a super little village."

For those who remember the movie, that certainly sounds more than a little bit like Bedford Falls.

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