An aspiring young actress from Farnham was sharing the limelight with a child star of horror movies in November 1980.

Reporting for the Farnham Herald, R C Kemp visited Sarah Prince on location at Penberth Cove in south-west Cornwall, where she was filming a play for the BBC with the working title The Badness Within Him.

It was eventually known as Last Summer’s Child when it was broadcast as part of the BBC2 Playhouse series in 1981, and one of Sarah’s co-stars in the hour-long drama, playing her sister Laura Fielding, was 17-year-old Chloe Franks.

Between 1970 and 1983 Chloe appeared in 12 films and 11 television programmes - including as Jane Reid, the witchcraft-obsessed daughter of Christopher Lee in 1971 horror movie The House That Dripped Blood.

Marcus D’Amico, then 14, played Sarah’s brother Col Marriott in Last Summer’s Child. He went on to roles in Superman II, Full Metal Jacket and Drop The Dead Donkey.

Last Summer’s Child was about a family who took over a house in Cornwall for their summer holidays during a heatwave in 1937.

Sarah’s parents, a professional couple, were played by Billie Whitelaw and Anthony Bate, who both enjoyed extensive film and television careers.

Sarah was also in demand. Once she finished filming in Cornwall, she went to Leeds to shoot more scenes as Gwen for ITV Playhouse production The Schoolmistress, which had been halted by a strike but was finally shown in December 1980.

At the time Sarah was a part-time student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where she was also taking examinations for a teaching diploma.

Recognising the need to keep her future options open, Sarah told the Herald: “I’m a realist and I realise that there are always more actors out of work than opportunities for them. But it’s proving a very interesting job.”