The Hunt For Artic House

Artic House, Main Street, Brandesburton, Driffield, YO25 

Right from the start, Artic was a company forever being put on and then taken off my to-do list. The problem was simple. Artic only had two addresses; one was a house and the other couldn't be located in the real world. This is suboptimal for a blog dedicated to tracking down and photographing the offices of old software houses. I kept a draft page on standby in case I turned up anything relevant. It sat in the background of this blog for a couple of years until one Sunday around the middle of 2024 I was in a ruthless mood and culled it and a load of others on the grounds they would never be used. So long, The Sales Curve. See you in hell, Aardvark Software. No room for you, The Electronic Pencil Company. Goodbye, Artic. And that was it. Deleted. Done. Dusted. I'd never follow Artic up now. Then I got an email. Most of what follows is Neil's fault.

Neil, sent me a lovely email in November 2024:

I know there are probably many other dev companies you want to research and document but I was reminded of one in the beginning of Tony Warriner's "Revolution: A Quest  for game development greatness"[1] and that was Arctic Computing.
I can see that Arctic Computing was originally in 396 James Reckett Avenue, Hull in 1983, and towards the end of 1983 moved to Main Street, Brandesburton, Driffield, but no exact address is given.
And now I'm curious as to the exact building!  

It started me wondering. Could I have another go at tracking down the Brandesburton address? At the risk of sounding egotistical, I'd got quite good at it, at least I like to think so. I've got more better[2] at checking the internet archive. I know the kind of questions that get a reply from local history groups. I have more access to old newspapers. Maybe I could make it work.

As I say, most of what follows is Neil's fault.

I knew Artic House existed from approximately July 1983 to at least 1992. What I didn't have was a solid address. There was a chance the Artic House name concealed an actual postal address, like Melbourne House when they moved to 60 High Street, Hampton Wick, in 1986 and renamed their new building Melbourne House; it turns out the Post Office don't care what you call a building as long as they can stuff mail through your letter box. However, if there was a real address I couldn't find it. Previously when I've got stuck I've been able to find an additional source. A nice Facebook post helped me locate Ultimate's ambiguous address at The Green, Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Records on Companies House worked for Graftgold. A lot of clicking around on Streetview gave me a result for Hewson Consultants. Or, in the case of the location of Design Design's photo cover for Forbidden Planet, the solution was sheer bloody-mindedness. I could have written about Artic without a location visit. That's why I started the Untraceables page in 2022 but see the CGL write up for why I ended up disliking that as an option. It's only the office photo gimmick that makes this blog different. 

That's where the matter ended. Until Neil's email arrived.

First, I went back to the original sources again. Nothing. The magazine collection on the Internet Archive. Nothing. The British Newspaper Archive and Newspapers.com. Nothing.

Next, I emailed the East Riding archives:

Hello,

I'm trying to locate the building a company called Arctic Computing Ltd who operated from between about 1983 and 1985.

The address was Main Street, Brandesburton, Driffield, YO2.

Do you have a street directory which could pinpoint the address? Unfortunately I am not able to visit the archive in person.  

I got a very nice reply but unfortunately the answer was no, they had no records relating to Artic House. 

I spoke to Emma. Emma is a mostly tame archivist who has previously indulged my silly hobby with good advice and minimal eye rolling.

Emma once again came up trumps:

I wish you had never told me about this – it is now driving me crazy.  I haven’t got an address for you, predictably – but a few things might help:

· The firm’s Charles Cecil is on X – you could just ask him.  I bet he’d be quite into your blog…

· For £18, you could make a request for historical planning information on ‘artic house’ which would hopefully include maps and/or the full address.

· A lot of the adverts on this site (which you will have seen) simply say ‘Artic computers ltd, Main Street, etc’ – they don’t even have artic house, which would suggest it was a fairly large operation and not run from someone’s house/flat.  So that would suggest you’re looking for an office/warehouse building as opposed to residential.

· This advert dates from 1990 – so the firm was actually still going then in Brandesburton, albeit it might have stopped producing games (I thought you might have missed this in your search since you likely narrowed down to 1980s) so worth asking for street directories from this time too if the historical planning application route doesn’t work: 

Submitting a historical planning application seemed like a good idea. I could afford £18. I am a man of means. Why only last year I bought a coffee, baguette and packet of crisps from Pret. However, I quickly hit a snag. That damned incomplete postal address. The planning request website required me to select an address from a drop-down menu. There was an option to email, which I did, but again I hit a brick wall. If I submitted a search via this route I would have to pay £54 (ouch, my wallet). I would also have to view the material in Beverley Library in Hull to see if it was relevant. No refunds or train fare if it wasn't. 

I was clearly in a bind. I might have to talk to someone. Charles Cecil has a Twitter account which is a shame because I don't. What if I sent an email to him via the Revolution Software website? I was a little reluctant to do this for a couple of reason, only one of which is bonkers. The bonkers reason first, it feels like cheating. I have an element of pride in all this, no really. I want to be able to point at stuff and go, "I made this" like the voice at the end of the X-Files. Just asking somebody seems like short-circuiting the process. The more sensible reason, I've had limited success with this tactic in the past. I'm obviously not going to name the people I have tried to contact previously because it's not fair. I can absolutely understand why people don't want to reply to emails going "hey, remember that thing you did in 1983, where was the office?"

I took a deep breath. I put on my brave big boy pants and emailed Revolution Software:

Hello,

I'm sorry in advance for the extremely random nature of this question.

I run a blog about old UK software houses and tracking down their offices. I'd like to cover Artic Computing where Charles Cecil was a director.

I've got an address for the company, Artic House, Main St. Brandesburton. Driffield YO25 8RL but I don't know which building this was on the street.

My question for Charles Cecil is, do you remember where Artic House was? Was it opposite any other streets or significant buildings in town? Anything you can remember might be really helpful. Currently I'm drawing a blank after checking with East Riding archives.

If you want to have a look at the blog it can be found here https://whereweretheynow.blogspot.com

Thank you for your time.

PS, I am probably not a crackpot.

I agonised over that email. I know it's silly but I often struggle to strike the right balance between being formal and informal. I can point to occasions when I've lost for-real-no-funnin' actual paid writing gigs because I misjudged the tone of a pitch email [3]. I sent that email on January 29th 2025 and waited.

And waited.

People are busy. They have complicated real world stuff going on. I couldn't even guarantee my email got past whoever gatekept the Revolution Software email account. I'd arrogantly sent it to the Press Enquires email address and it was clear I had reached too high too soon. "Look at this one. They say they're not a crackpot". "That's always a warning sign. Stick it in the bin, quick!"

I waited a bit more.

It would be silly not to write about Artic Software anyway and I had one other thing I wanted to cover, THE SUN's faux outraged coverage of Ship of Doom. I knew THE SUN ran their story in 1984. And I knew it was no later than March 1984 because it gets a brief mention in HANSARD for 16 March. All I needed was a stack of copies of THE SUN. From 1984.

The British Newspaper Archive online does not include THE SUN. I'd been to the British Library Newspaper archive when it was based in Colindale [5] but it moved to Boston Spa, in Yorkshire, years ago and the British Library website was opaque about how you requested newspapers. Fortunately I was chatting to my friend Oliver Wake [6] and he told me about the Newsroom on the second floor at St Pancras, where they keep the microfilm. All I needed to do, was go along.

Monday 24th March 2025. The British Library. I wasn't really sure what to expect when browsing THE SUN from 1984. Fortunately I was looking at papers printed during the Miner's Strike so they'd dialled back the homophobia to fit in all the lies about Arthur Scargill [7]. I struggled with the controls on the microfilm reader. It would whiz forwards too quickly to read and then stall when I attempted to slow the progress down; inevitably this stall happened as the microfilm approached page three. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to choose a microfilm machine with it's screen to the wall. I was very conscious that I didn't want to look like the world's worst pervert, fast-forwarding through THE SUN and apparently pausing lasciviously at each page three lovely before fast-forwarding on to ogle the next; your honour. I got lucky and quickly found THE SUN'S follow up story printed on Saturday 17th March (CURB ON TV GAME 'NASTIES') which referred me back to their story printed "last Tuesday".

The story was on page three. This was something Charles Cecil recalled in an interview with RETRO GAMER. I don't know if you've ever tried to photograph page three of THE SUN off a microfilm screen in the Newsroom of the British Library but it's difficult to do without feeling and looking like a massive pervert. It was tricky because the page three model "lovely Erica Preston" was lying on her front and... excuse me...

her nipples kept intruding into the frame. In the end I took a picture of the whole page because I thought it might be amusing to show the juxtaposition of the story; but it wasn't that amusing so I didn't. On my way home I jokingly WhatsApped some friends about my day and was genuinely disturbed to get this reply:

On a more serious note; many of the photos on Page 3 are now deemed to be illegal. Basically any photo where the model was 16 or 17 at the time the photo was taken.

Yes, it's true. I could potentially have photos on my phone that breached the Sexual Offences Act 2003 fortunately I was quickly able to establish that in 1984 Erica Preston was at least 21 and all the nipples on my phone are 100% legal.

Oh cripes! I've got an email from Charles Cecil. Friday 28th March.

Apologies for the slow reply.

I love that we called the tiny office ‘Artic House’ - it was a shack on the corner of the main road from Hull and Main Street. I see from Googlemaps that there is now a dual carriageway and a large roundabout, so I fear that the site is under the new roundabout.
Hope that helps.  

This was awesome. Beyond anything I could have hoped. Not only had I got a reply. I had a picture showing me the roundabout which probably rested on top of the foundations of Artic House. Even now, writing this, I've got an idiot smile on my face and that's just from the memory of how I felt at the time. Charles Cecil had sent me a map. Charles Cecil, adventure game author had sent me a map. The creator of Broken Sword [8] had sent me a map! Was I going to follow it? You're damn right. Wouldn't you?

Saturday 29th I sent a reply:

Thank you for indulging my nonsense, I really appreciate it.

It's probably going to be several months before I get round to writing about Artic. Mostly because, in the spirit of the blog, I now need to go to  Brandesburton and take a photo of the roundabout.

What a day trip this would be. Those 200 miles would fly by. On Sunday, before I could fire up the old automobile, I got a reply.

Let me copy in Richard Turner who founded Artic and was the big boss.

Richard - would you agree with my analysis that ‘Artic House’ was where Main Street met the main road (which wasn’t dual carriageway and there was no roundabout), so it would be under where the roundabout has now been built as marked by the arrow? I think that what is now New Road was a dead end, and didn’t run into the main road at that time.

I actually have a picture somewhere of me and Richard standing in front of the building when we were working there in the mid ‘80s which I can try to dig out.

I was experiencing complicated multiple emotions. Obviously I would lose my mind if Charles Cecil found the photograph of Richard Turner and himself standing in front of Artic House. If Friday had been beyond my wildest expectations then Sunday was some sort of personal mini-Renaissance, as if I'd randomly drawn a few lines on a canvas and accidentally discovered linear perspective. I'd been copied in on an email to Richard Turner. I was now wasting the valuable time of two people! I've seen schadenfreude defined as shameful joy and that was the closest I can come to describing how I felt about myself; joy and shame. It was a heady mix.

Play it cool. I was in danger of getting giddy and overexcited and suggesting something I'd regret like a reunion photograph of Richard Turner and Charles Cecil on the roundabout. NO! That would be a terrible idea. Focus. Breath. Wait. 

God bless him, Richard Turner sent a reply. And it was a good job I hadn't set off towards Brandesburton first thing on Sunday morning:

Good morning Gents.

The building no longer exists. The land was sold and a developer who knocked it down and put a house on the site.

Here is how to locate it.
Coming from Leven if you follow the main road going past the golf course on your left the building was located on New road just before the corner of Main Street.
Just about opposite Leven Road on the right.

I hope this helps.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/TayWgcrQ3nFHoxpm9  

Not unreasonably after quite a long time, Charles Cecil had mixed up the A165, which is a totally new bypass around Brandesburton, and New Road, which seems to have been an older attempt to also divert passing traffic away from Brandesburton town centre. The roundabout Charles Cecil was talking about is the junction between the top of Main Street, New Road, and the A165. Richard Turner's link points to the other end of Main Street, the junction between Main Street and the point where New Road becomes Starcarr Lane. You can see on Google Maps how that junction has been redesigned to reduce the speed of traffic turning off into Main Street. At one point it clearly continued in a straight line past the site where Artic House stood, and where the house in Richard Turner's link now stands.

[UPDATE 11/06/2025: Another email from Neil pointing out a source I'd missed. You can see an old aerial photo of Artic House here. The link doesn't point straight to Artic House. You need to look north-west on the other side of the road. for the building apparently built right up to the side of the road. That's it.]

There you go Neil. This is what you have wrought. You gave me the perfect subject for the 100th post on this blog. The location of Artic House, Main Street, Brandesburton is now confirmed through the help of Richard Turner and Charles Cecil. Normal service will be resumed in two weeks time. There's not really much else for me to do except thank Neil, and Charles Cecil, and Richard Turner, and Emma, and Oliver. And you, reading this self-indulgent whiffle. Thank you. And good night. Oh yes. There was supposed to be a picture.

 

Published with the permission of Charles Cecil.

[1] By Fusion Retro Books. If it comes back in stock, buy a copy.
[2] Yes, more better. This is the kind of stupid error I normally edit out. However I like the fact that this one sits right at the start of me boasting about my special set of skills. It stays as a monument to my hubris.
[3] I don't want to self mythologise too much. We're not talking like dozens, just a couple that really hang in my memory as proper two-paths-diverged-in-a-yellow-wood moments. They were magazines I would have been delighted to write for but it's not like I lost a prestigious NEW YORKER commission because my email to the editor started "Dear Sexy Knickers".[4]
[4] I'm not a complete Rube. I know the correct form when writing to the editor of the New Yorker is "Darling Sexy Knickers".
[5] To look up RADIO TIMES listings about Star Trek because that's how I rolled in pre-BBC Genome days.
[6] You, yes you, should follow him on Bluesky @oliver-wake.bsky.social, for all your Doctor Who and archive television needs.
[7] Little bit of politics there.
[8] I'm struck by the coincidence that when I started doing technical support/customer service for Virgin Interactive in early 1997 one of the first things I had to do was tell people how to solve the goat puzzle in Broken Sword.  

Emails to whereweretheynow@gmail.com I am also on Bluesky. @shammountebank.bsky.social

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to swoon on a chaise lounge in a darkened room like the heroine of a Victorian melodrama receiving bad news from Mafeking.