man. Stricken by illness and with his expectations gone, Pip is taken home and nursed back to health by Joe Gargery. He revisits Miss Havisham's deserted house, where he finds Estella. Drummle broke off their engagement when Jaggers informed him of her parentage. Learning that Estella plans to live in seclusion in the house, which she has inherited, Pip tears down the curtains and opens the boarded-up windows. Sunlight reveals cobwebs, dust and decay. Pip tells Estella that he has never stopped loving her. After hesitating, she embraces him and they leave the house together. Cast Locations Restoration House in Rochester was Dickens' inspiration for "Satis House", the decaying mansion of Miss Havisham. The production reproduced Restoration House in Denham Film Studios in Buckinghamshire. Dickens based Joe Gargery's house on the forge in the village of Chalk, near Gravesend, Kent – a replica was erected on St Mary's Marshes on the Isle of Grain on the Thames Estuary. Pip and Herbert Pocket arrange to meet Magwitch and help him escape at Chatham Docks where slip 8 was used for the scene as well as exterior shots of the prison hulk ships. The River Medway and the adjacent St Mary's Marshes appear in scenes where Pip and his friend, Herbert Pocket, row their boat to a small inn whilst waiting for the paddle steamer to arrive. The ship used in the film was called Empress, dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century and owned by Cosens & Co Ltd of Weymouth. She was brought down to the River Medway for the shoot. "New masts were stepped-in with square rigging and dummy sails, the funnel was lengthened and the paddle-boxes enlarged until it looked exactly right." The company was based at Rochester, and stayed for six weeks at the Royal Victoria and Bull Hotel – the Blue Boar in Dickens' novel. The unit for the location work for the film was based on a derelict naval fort on Darnett Ness Island in the River Medway. Development of the script The script is a slimmed-down version of Dickens' novel. It was inspired after David Lean witnessed an abridged 1939 stage version of the novel, by Alec Guinness. Guinness had played Herbert Pocket, and Martita Hunt was Miss Havisham in the stage version of 1939. The script for the film was written by David Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan, Cecil McGivern, Ronald Neame and